DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 25 



The northern birds are not confined to this form, nor are the 

 southern birds confined to any particular form ; but tlie 

 ''teacher" song is, apparently, used only by northern birds. 

 Nor do they so far as my experience may be taken as a guide, 

 ever sing it while on their migratory journeys through more 

 southerly states. 



Individual variety may be found in the songs of most, if not 

 all, other species. Even the humbler vocalists, such as the 

 Black-capped Chickadee, the Black and White Warbler, the 

 Maryland Yellow-throat, and others of this less musically ex- 

 alted type, exhibit marked variety in the simple songs they 

 utter. Let us take the Chickadee as an example. My obser- 

 vation has been chiefly of the southern form carolinensis, though 

 I have noted considerable variety in the singing of atricapilla 

 also, and could doubtless show its repertoire to be as varied as 

 that of its southern congener, had as much attention been devot( d 

 to one as to the other. In the case of the Carolina Chickadee I 

 have notations of nineteen different songs, besides five or six 

 slight variations of these. This does not include any of the six 

 or seven distinct and separate call-notes ; nor does it, of coure e, 

 include any songs of which I made no musical record. On one 

 warm day in late summer — the 22d of September, — when the 

 thermometer registered a maximum temperature of 98° (a re- 

 markable record for a period when Washington is usually enjoy- 

 ing its first frosts of the season), one Chickadee, out of a flock 

 that I was observing, uttered nine or ten different songs and 

 calls, most of them new to me. I did not note these on the staff: 

 had I done so, the foregoing totals would have been materially 

 increased. And there have been other occasions when I might 

 have added to my records, but did not do so. 



One common form of song with the Chickadees of the neigh- 

 borhood of Washington — the southern form (I have never noted 

 the northern form here) — is noted in Rec. 2. Another is shown 

 in Rec. 3. This last I usually refer to in my notes as the early 

 spring song of the Chickadee, not because it is confined to the sea- 

 son when the bonds of winter are beginning to relax their grip, 

 but because it has often happened to be the first song to break 

 the long silence of winter. It is a welcome herald of the season 



