BIRD-SONGS 



an oriole, and a wood thrush, each of \vhich had a 

 song of its own that far exceeded any other. I stood 

 one day by a trout-stream, and suspended my fish- 

 ing for several minutes to watch a song sparrow 

 that was singing on a dry limb before me. He had 

 five distinct songs, each as markedly different from 

 the others as any human songs, which he repeated 

 ^ne after the other. He may have had a sixth or 

 a seventh, but he bethought himself of some busi- 

 ness in the next field, and flew away before he had 

 exhausted his repertory. I once had a letter from 

 Robert Louis Stevenson, who said he had read an 

 account I had written of the song of the English 

 blackbird. He said I might as well talk of the song 

 of man; that every blackbird had its own song; and 

 then he told me of a remarkable singer he used to 

 hear somewhere amid the Scottish hills. But his 

 singer was, of course, an exception ; twenty-four 

 blackbirds out of every twenty-five probably sing 

 the same song, with no appreciable variations : but 

 the twenty-fifth may show extraordinary powers. I 

 told Stevenson that his famous singer had probably 

 been to school to some nightingale on the Continent 

 or in southern England. I might have told him of the 

 robin I once heard here that sang with great spirit 

 and accuracy the song of the brown thrasher, or of 

 another that had the note of the whip-poor-will 

 interpolated in the refgular robin song, or of still 

 another that had the call of the quail. In each case 

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