6o IN BIRD LAND. 



ends with a merry little trill having a delightfully 

 human intonation. There is, indeed, something 

 innocent and even childlike about the voices of 

 these sparrows. Had they the song-sparrow's skill 

 in execution, they would rival that triller's vocal 

 performances. How many of them are taking 

 part in the concert ! They seem to be holding a 

 song carnival to-day, and there is real witchery in 

 their music. Frequently their songs are superim- 

 posed, as it were, upon the semi-musical chattering 

 in which these birds so often indulge.'' 



But, strange to say, although the conditions were 

 apparently in every respect favorable, I did not hear 

 the song of a single tree-sparrow after that epochal 

 day for more than a year. Evidently these birds 

 are erratic songsters, at least in this latitude. On 

 the same day the meadow-larks flung their flute-like 

 songs athwart the fields, and the bold bugle of the 

 Carolina wren echoed through the woods. 



February 14. " In the swamp the song-sparrows 

 are holding an opera festival," my notes run. " One 

 of them trills softly in a clump of wild- rose bushes, 

 as if asking permission to sing ; and then, his request 

 being gladly granted, he leaps up boldly to a twig 

 of a sapling, and breaks into a torrent of melody. 

 Another, in precisely the same tune, answers him 

 farther down the stream, the two executing a sort 

 of fugue. A third leaps about on the dry grass 

 that fringes a ditch, twitters merrily for a while, 

 then flies to a small oak-tree near by, and — well, 

 such a loud, rollicking, tempestuous song I have 



