A Bouquet of Song Birds 



row beats them all ; for he is the very embodi- 

 ment of modesty. Sometimes he mounts a lit- 

 tle way up a tree, and delivers his apologetic 

 little message ; but often he is too humble even 

 to do that, and will stand on the ground, throw 

 up his tiny red bill, and pour forth his mild and 

 sweet salute. The note of the field-sparrow is 

 like a pleasant word dropped in the morning, 

 that dissolves into a faint radiance for the en- 

 tire day. It would be incongruous to greet its 

 simple melody with boisterous praise ; there are 

 some deeds for whose performance silence is 

 the best applause. The song of this bird is 

 much like that of the vesper-sparrow — three or 

 four detached notes followed by a rippUng 

 sound, like the melodious drops of a broken 

 stream of water ; but not so loud, rich, and as- 

 sertive as in the vesper-sparrow. However, if 

 the softer-voiced field-sparrow hves and over- 

 comes his modesty, he will become quite as 

 pleasing a singer as his better known and more 

 confident brother — who, by the way, sings all 

 through the day, and not merely at evening, as 

 a well-known writer has mistakenly asserted. 

 While almost all sparrows prefer the more open 

 places to the deeper woods, this is emphatically 

 true of field and vesper sparrows, that are par- 



