APRIL. 91 



brown feathers sing like a " debilitated chipper " ! Such 

 was my companion's comparison. I am not sure that I 

 have ever heard a broken-down chipper sing ; but given 

 one in good health, and his tremulous twitter, full of vim 

 as it is, is music that charms. Heard first while yet winter 

 lingers, it is full of spring-tide suggestiveness, and shames 

 our want of faith. 



Very different were the earnest notes of a pair of dainty 

 blue-gray gnatcatchers that came dashing through the 

 tree-tops, and at once set us all craning our necks that we 

 might follow their quick motions. They uttered not only 

 two clear notes, but followed these with a rapid trill at 

 times, as though, through the scolding, their stock of syl- 

 lables bubbled over ; and there was always an earnestness 

 in their song, if so one may call it, that compelled atten- 

 tion. 



I have been familiar with this little bird for years, and 

 it has always been a matter of surprise that Wilson should 

 have spoken of it as chirping feebly as a mouse, or, as has 

 been remarked by a more recent writer, " like a mouse with 

 a toothache." When nesting, this bird sings, but very 

 rarely, in quite an elaborate manner, but probably much 

 less so than in more southern localities. I have found, on 

 comparing notes with observers in other fields, that the 

 song of the same species differs very widely in different 

 localities. 



Much depends, I take it, upon all the circumstances 

 attendant upon the study of a particular warbler, whether 

 it proves of special interest or not. Certainly, as yellow 

 red-polls, northward bound, there is nothing particularly 

 attractive about them ; as there is, for instance, about the 

 ever abundant summer yellow-bird, whose few simple notes 

 are so full of satisfaction — as though it was insisting upon 

 the debatable point, whether or not life is worth living. 



It is ornithological heterodoxy to speak disparagingly 



