210 



AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 



into a flower and extracted the drop of sweet. So rapidly did he pass 

 from flower to flower that I was not able to follow, so catching him 

 in the vision of my field glasses I watched him disappear. 



Although he had a large variety of flowers from which to select 

 honey, he must have missed the young spiders and spider s eggs, 

 that constitute such a large proportion of his food in the United States. 



And so I found after all, that Alaska was not the bleak and friend- 

 less country I had supposed it to be. 



WHAT THE BIRDS SAY, 



By Alberta Field. 

 "Do you ask what the birds say?" 



— Colridge. 



erhaps one must be abnormally imaginative in 

 order to interpret into comprehensive English the 

 songs of our wild birds, but it is a pastime not 

 without attractions, and its interest grows on 

 one apace. It soon becomes a habit for the bird 

 lover to instinctively set to words, as it were, the 

 various bird utterances, which eventually results 

 in the individualizing of many singers of the same 

 species, that are ordinarily recognizable by their 

 similiarty of song, and it is not until one makes a 

 study of bird melody that one learns to differentiate between the song 

 notes of a species and the utterances of a specie^ and the utterances of 

 an individual. 



Observation teaches all of us that bird music varies greatly with the 

 season, not only in note, but in modulation of tone. Even the casual 

 student must distinguish between the enthusiastic clamor of the court- 

 ing season, and the warble of passivity and content of late summer, 

 among those residents who are not entirely silenced by the season. 

 How jubilant is the blue bird's love call of "dearie-come-'ere" resound- 

 through the budding trees through which they flit in search of her, the 

 gallants of their family arriving a few days in advance of the bird 

 maidens who do not journey north in company with their turquoise- 

 tinted mates. Their marriage song varies greatly from this courting 

 trill, and the May air fairly vibrates with the continuous "cheer-up, 

 dearie, dearie, cheer-up" of encouragement, while in autumn their 

 sweet "thorough-wort" floats softly through the air, and one comes to 

 associate it with the golden haze of the departing year, though just 

 wherein lies the interest in this bitter herb is undiscoverable. 



