SONG BIRDS OF ORCHARD AND WOODLAND. 199 
One day, as I stopped to drink at a spring in the woods, a 
beautiful male Black-throated Green Warbler shot down from 
a tall tree and alighted on a moss-grown rock that bordered 
the diminutive pool. Evidently he had not expected me, but 
was not at all afraid. He looked up at me inquiringly for a 
moment, and then, stepping into the 
shallow water, dipped his head and 
threw the drops in showers ashe 4 
shook out his brilliant plumage 
in the bath. His ablutions 
finished, quite within reach 
of my hand, he mounted again 
to the tree top, and sent back his drowsy : 
song. Fig. 67.— Black-throated 
This bird has several chirps which it Warbler, natural 
utters to express different emotions, but 
its song is most charming, harmonizing, as it does, with the 
whispering of the pines to the summer wind. It has a zeeing 
sound. Hoffman gives it as zee, zee, zu, 21. This is given 
with a little of the quality which characterizes the song of the 
harvest cicada, and often with a difference in the pitch of the 
first and last syllables. John Burroughs graphically repre- 
sents the notes thus: — —./— —. The upper lines signify 
the higher tones. Bradford Torrey translates the song as 
“Trees, trees, murmuring trees ;” but a more practical writer 
assures us that the bird calls for “Cheese, cheese, a little 
more cheese.” It has at least one other song of the same 
character, but longer and perhaps a trifle more varied. This 
is usually considered to be its entire repertoire; but no one 
can ever be quite sure that he knows all the notes of any 
bird. In the fall of 1905 I heard in a small birch tree in 
Concord a song that resembled closely the lay of a Warbling 
Vireo. In fact, I mistook it for the song of that bird; but 
in trying to find the singer I soon learned that there was 
no Vireo in the tree, and that the song came from a young 
male Black-throated Green Warbler, which repeated it sev- 
eral times before my eyes. 
Mr. C. A. Reed says he believes that when its nest is in 
danger of discovery this Warbler sometimes brings straws 
