110 East and West 
of the bobolink, the raucous clatter of the 
ring-necked pheasant, and the wonderfully 
mysterious utterance of the upland plover, are 
the familiar bird notes. One and all seem the 
peculiar and fitting expression of the fields, 
as the Carolina wren is the very voice of a 
Southern cypress swamp, or a cafion wren of 
the sombre gorges of Arizona. Above all, 
the bobolink expresses the gladness and 
brightness of the fields: a voice inspired by 
sun and sky and the waving grain. Like the 
bobolink, the upland plover sings on the wing 
and his song is perhaps not so much of the 
fields as of the sky. As you watch him sus- 
pended high in air above the wheat, there 
descends to your ear, as if from a remote dis- 
tance, a mysterious, gurgling, melodious sound, 
half sigh, half whistle;—Way up in the air—! 
it seems to say, beginning with a rising and 
ending with a falling inflection long drawn 
out. And when the bird drops out of the 
sky it is to alight with wings held gracefully 
aloft as butterflies alight on a flower, or 
Bonaparte gulls on the water. 
Western New York is presumably indebted 
to the continental glacier for its lakes, as 
Long Island for its hills, and in one case as in 
the other, the topography was greatly varied 
