192 BIRD PARADISE 



It is a curious fact that nearly all of our winter 

 birds rank below the average as singei-s. They 

 have little to put aside when they drop all the 

 songs they use. I have recently seen an article 

 where the writer speaks very highly of the blue 

 jay as a singer. He kept one in a cage for a 

 number of years and of course had an excellent 

 opportunity to learn all the musical facts the 

 bird could furnish him. I have heard their 

 sharp calls and some of the softer notes, of which 

 the writer speaks, but nothing that I could term 

 a real bird song. The little chickadee uses his 

 song throughout the year and it is most attract- 

 ive, though brief. None of the woodpeckers, 

 so far as I know, use anything that could pos- 

 sibly be rightfully entitled a song. Burroughs 

 speaks of the rattling noise they make high up 

 on some dead dry limb as a sort of apology for 

 a song and possibly his surmise may be correct. 

 Snow-bunting trills a few notes as he passes high 

 up in the air, but his real song he reserves for the 

 nesting season later in the spring. Yellowbird 

 follows the same rule, using in the winter only a 

 brief call note. If the matter were left to me to 

 decide, I should certainly have some of the regu- 

 lar song dispensed in the midst of the frost and 



