96 THE HUMAN SHDE OF BIRDS 



warbler, the wryneck, the butclier-bird, the nut- 

 hatch, the goldfinch, chaffinch, and even the night- 

 ingale, have all furnished him with notes, bars, and 

 cadences. 



The great thrush f ajnily gives us three musicians 

 of extraordinary ability: the wood thrush, the 

 veery, and the hermit thrush. They differ from 

 each other in song, and from all other birds in many 

 ways. With them habitat — environment — also 

 causes variations, as with other birds and with man. 



The songs of these birds are held dear by those 

 who hear them in their native haunts. Lynn Tew 

 Sprague says: "There is absolutely no tone in 

 nature — ^no human voice, no vibration of string, or 

 wood, or metal — ^to compare in mellow richness and 

 sonority with the thrush's note. . . . 'Tonal qual- 

 ity' is a phrase we use, but when listening to one 

 of these birds we are for the first time aware of 

 the full difference in the mystical merging of those 

 ghostly groups of -subconscious harmonies, which 

 science tells us accompany every tone, so that each 

 note is really a harmony. The voices of these three 

 birds resemble each other in quality, yet each pos- 

 sesses a subtle tonal colour and their songs are 

 different in pitch and measure . . . the bewilder- 

 ing cadenzas of the veery, the serene largo of the 

 wood thrush, the more joyous adagio of the hermit 



