WAYS OF NATURE 
hear them at all. The sound of a boy’s penny 
whistle there in the grove or the meadow would 
separate itself more from the background of nature, 
and be a greater challenge to the ear, than is the 
strain of the thrush or the song of the sparrow. 
There is something elusive, indefinite, neutral, about 
bird-songs that makes them strike obliquely, as it 
were, upon the ear; and we are very apt to miss 
them. They are a part of nature, the Nature that 
lies about us, entirely occupied with her own affairs, 
and quite regardless of our presence. Hence it is 
with bird-songs as it is with so many other things 
in nature — they are what we make them; the ear 
that hears them must be half creative. I am always 
disturbed when persons not especially observant 
of birds ask me to take them where they can hear 
a particular bird, in whose song they have become 
interested through a description in some book. As 
I listen with them, I feel like apologizing for the 
bird: it has a bad cold, or has just heard some 
depressing news; it will not let itself out. The 
song seems so casual and minor when you make a 
dead set at it. I have taken persons to hear the 
hermit thrush, and I have fancied that they were all 
the time saying to themselves, “Is that all?” But 
should one hear the bird in his walk, when the mind 
is attuned to simple things and is open and recep- 
tive, when expectation is not aroused and the song 
comes as a surprise out of the dusky silence of the 
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