IN THE HEMLOCKS 53 
Yet in this the half is not told. He has a far rarer 
song, which he reserves for some nymph whom he 
meets in the air. Mounting by easy flights to the 
top of the tallest tree, he launches into the air with 
a sort of suspended, hovering flight, like certain 
of the finches, and bursts into a perfect ecstasy of 
song, —clear, ringing, copious, rivaling the gold- 
finch’s in vivacity, and the linnet’s in melody. 
This strain is one of the rarest bits of bird melody 
to be heard, and is oftenest indulged in late in the 
afternoon or after sundown. Over the woods, hid 
from view, the ecstatic singer warbles his finest 
strain. In this song you instantly detect his rela- 
tionship to the water-wagtail, — erroneously called 
water-thrush, — whose song is likewise a sudden 
burst, full and ringing, and with a tone of youthful 
joyousness in it, as if the bird had just had some 
unexpected good fortune. For nearly two years this 
strain of the pretty walker was little more than a 
disembodied voice to me, and I was puzzled by it 
as Thoreau by his mysterious night-warbler, which, 
by the way, I suspect was no new bird at all, but 
one he was otherwise familiar with. The little bird 
himself seems disposed to keep the matter a secret, 
and improves every opportunity to repeat before you 
his shrill, accelerating lay, as if this were quite 
enough and all he laid claim to. Still, I trust I 
am betraying no confidence in making the matter 
public here. I think this is preéminently his love- 
song, as I hear it oftenest about the mating season. 
I have caught half-suppressed bursts of it from two 
