120 Wild Bird Guests 



tire of using birds in their schemes of decoration. 

 All kinds of birds are used and nearly always with 

 beautiful effect. Sometimes it is a song bird, 

 sitting with swelled throat and parted bill, among 

 the dehcately tinted blossoms of cherry or wild 

 plum; again it is a heron standing on one leg 

 beside a conventional stream, or a crow perched 

 on a leafless branch amid the winter whiteness; 

 and still again it is a flock of swallows or wild 

 geese flung out across the sky and telling their 

 story as well as if the picture had been labelled 

 "Spring." 



It can hardly be doubted that in the origin of 

 music the songs of birds were among the first 

 suggestions supplied to primitive musicians by 

 external nature. Later instrumental composers 

 have found in the imitation of Nature's voices 

 a distinct phase of musical expression, and in 

 this the calls and songs of birds hold a conspicu- 

 ous place. The call of the cuckoo was a 

 favorite motive among early instrumental com- 

 posers, and was used by Beethoven in the 

 Scene hy a Brook, in the Pastoral Symphony, 

 together with the songs of the nightingale and the 

 call of the quail. Another very notable example 

 of the employment of bird notes by great com- 

 posers, is found in Wagner's Siegfried. Sieg- 

 fried listens to the songs of birds, made plain to 



