FIELD AND STUDY 



row sings, perch every hour in the day two bluebirds 

 who are busy feeding their young in a cavity exca- 

 vated by a woodpecker in a maple-stub on the cor- 

 ner of my porch. They do no singing, but seem to 

 converse in soft warbles, and they signal to each 

 other in gentle wing gestures. They do not heed the 

 singing sparrow, nor he them, bjut they often dive 

 spitefully at the "chippie" when she comes about 

 her own private business in the .grass under their 

 brood. 



The bluebird is not a singer like the robin or the 

 sparrow, but he is one of our soft, sweet-voiced 

 birds, with many pretty ways that greatly endear 

 him to all country people. He is clearly an offshoot, 

 back in biologic time, from the line of thrushes, and 

 he inherits their soft voices and pleasing manners, 

 but not their musical talents. Nature has made 

 amends to him in his extra color. 



Here we strike the exceptional fact in bird-life, 

 the non-singing birds, such as our bluebird, our 

 cedar waxwing, our nuthatches, our kingbird, and 

 others, all of which have their calls more or less 

 musical, but none of which are deliberate songsters. 

 The cedar-bird has the least voice of any of our 

 small birds that I now recall, his sole note being a 

 fine, beadlike sound which he usually utters on tak- 

 ing flight. Approach his nest or young and, so far 

 as I have observed, he shows no other sign of agi- 

 tation than depressing his plumage and assuming 

 96 



