90 BIRDS AND POETS 



during the breeding season, and associated with 

 clover and daisies and buttercups as no other bird 

 is, he yet has the look of an interloper or a new- 

 comer, and not of one to the manor born. 



The bobolink has an unusually full throat, which 

 may help account for his great power of song. No 

 bird has yet been found that could imitate him, or 

 even repeat or suggest a single note, as if his song 

 were the product of a new set of organs. There is 

 a vibration about it, and a rapid running over the 

 keys, that is the despair of other songsters. It is 

 said that the mockingbird is dumb in the presence 

 of the bobolink. My neighbor has an English sky- 

 lark that was hatched and reared in captivity. The 

 bird is a most persistent and vociferous songster, 

 and fully as successful a mimic as the mockingbird. 

 It pours out a strain that is a regular mosaic of 

 nearly all the bird-notes to be heard, its own proper 

 lark song forming a kind of bordering for the whole. 

 The notes of the phoebe-bird, the purple finch, the 

 swallow, the yellowbird, the kingbird, the robin, 

 and others, are rendered with perfect distinctness 

 and accuracy, but not a word of the bobolink's, 

 though the lark must have heard its song every day 

 for four successive summers. It was the one con- 

 spicuous note in the fields around that the lark 

 made no attempt to plagiarize. He could not steal 

 the bobolink's thunder. 



The lark is only a more marvelous songster than 

 the bobolink on account of his soaring fiight and 

 the sustained copiousness of his song. His note is 



