146 



IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



the Berkshire Hills, at any rate, they are migrants, 

 though I have two personal records of them here in 

 mid-July, and have not attained their true song 

 when they pass through. The books of bird songs 

 almost invariably give the white-throat's melody 

 something as follows: 



And that is the way he sings till he reaches the White 

 Mountains. But there, at least, he invariably, in 

 my experience, adds two more intervals, his song 

 being as follows: 



This song, with its clearly marked intervals and its 

 exquisite precision of pitch, comes fluting across 

 every upland pasture, an antiphonal to the deeper 

 clarion of the thrushes in the woods behind. The 

 white-throat I heard last summer, in Tolland, Mass- 

 achusetts, in July, had attained this second song. 



The white-throats build their nests frequently on 

 the ground, but sometimes in low bushes or fallen, 

 dead trees. I have found them in the dry branches 

 of a small prostrate fir. And I have sat beneath a 

 tree on the edge of a pasture on Cannon Mountain 

 in Franconia and listened for an hour while a parent 

 bird tried to teach a baby to sing. I have been told 

 by the real ornithologists that I did nothing of the 

 kind, to be sure, but that only constrains me to 

 think the scientists do not know everything. The 



