WOOD WARBLERS. 167 
less like warbling than the songs of our ‘Warblers’ can well be imagined. Bluebirds and 
Wrens warble or trill their lays; Warblers, as arule, do not. There are few great singers 
among them all. Their voice usually is thin, sharp, ‘unsympathetic’; the pitch is too 
high; the notes: are abrupt and jerky; movement is uneven and never long-sustained. 
The song indeed has musical quality, and may effeét us rather pleasantly; but our 
attention is more likely to be arrested by its oddity than attracted by its melody. I 
cannot but criticise here; yet I am ready to bear witness to the endless variety of the 
songs of the Warblers,—probably every species has its own, distinctly recognizable by 
the practised ear; and much of the pleasurable excitement which the study of these 
birds affords, comes from the effort of discriminating between their wonderfully varied 
performances. Probably no single ornithologist has learned them all—even all those to 
be heard in his own vicinity; so subtile, so fugitive, so incomprehensible are these quaint 
snatches of song, which arouse attention only to disappoint expectation, and make us 
feel that we can never interpret the language in which these sylvan sprites tell the story 
of their lives. But the Warblers are such a multitude, so composite, that no indiscrimi- 
nate comment, however guarded, can fail to do injustice. There are singers among them. 
The voice of the Summer Yellowbird is sweetly modulated. The species of the genus 
Seiurus are splendid performers: the Golden-crown is a musician of extraordinary yet 
long-unsuspected ability, so seduously does he hide his real accomplishments—one who 
continually obtrudes upon us his loud shrill chant, in accelerated monotone, as if this 
were all that lay in his power; yet in rare moments of triumph delighting to transport 
us with the exquisite vocalization which his nuptial ecstasies inspire. 
“More anon of the general habits of the Warblers, when I come to speak of the 
genera and species individually; here I can do little more than witness the ‘various 
language’ which they speak ‘to him who in the love of nature holds communion with 
her visible forms.’ The Warblers have we always with us, all in their own good time; 
they come out of the South, pass on, return, and are away again, their appearance 
and withdrawal scarcely less than a mystery; many stay with us all summer long, 
and some brave the winters in our midst. Some of these slight creatures, guided by 
unerring instiné, travel through to the meridian in the hours of darkness, slipping past 
‘ike a thief in the night,’ stooping at day-break from their lofty flights to rest and 
recruit for the next stage of the journey. Others pass more leisurely from tree to tree, 
in a ceaseless tide of migration, gleaning as they go; the hardier males, in full song and 
plumage, lead the way for the weaker females and the yearlings. With tireless industry 
do the Warblers befriend the human race; their unconscious zeal plays due part in the 
nice adjustment of nature’s forces, helping to bring about the balance of vegetable and 
insect life, without which agriculture would be in vain. They visit the orchard when 
the apple and pear, the peach, plum, and cherry, are in bloom, seeming to revel care- 
lessly amid the sweet-scented and delicately tinted blossoms, but never faltering in their 
good work. They peer into the crevices of the bark, scrutinize each leaf, and explore 
the very heart of the buds, to detect, drag forth, and destroy those tiny creatures, 
singly insignificant, collectively a scourge, which prey upon the hopes of the fruit-grower, 
and which, if undisturbed, would bring his care to nought. Some Warblers flit inces- 
santly in the terminal foliage of the tallest trees; others hug close to the scored trunks 
