BOBOLINK. 237 



in full song from a rocking bough or from the air, and flutters tremulously down to 

 the earth, as if overcome with ecstasy at its own music. When one spreads its wings 

 and bursts into ecstatic song, others are sure to follow. This sailing, frolicking, and 

 singing in the air, and this rocking on the slender weed-stems is continued all day long 

 in fine w^eather. 



The Bobolink never sings before sunrise. It begins its sweet music when the more 

 earnest and solemn melody of the Robin, which was heard from earliest day-break, is 

 almost at its close. Nature seems to have ordained that the serious parts of her musical 

 entertainment in the morning hours should first be heard, and that the lively and merry 

 strains should follow them. In the evening this order is reversed, and after the comedy 

 is concluded Nature lulls us to repose by the mellow notes of the Vesper Sparrow, and 

 the pensive and still more melodious strains of the solitary Thrushes.* 



One of our most congenial and amiable ornithologists, the late Dr. T. M. Brewer, 

 has given an account of the Bobolink's song which is too faithful and vivid to ever 

 grow out of date : 



"Of all our unimitative and natural songsters the Bobolink is by far the most 

 popular and attractive. Always original and peculiarly natural, its song is exquisitely 

 musical. In the variety of its notes, in the rapidity with which they are uttered, 

 and in the touching pathos, beauty^ and melody of their tone and expression, its 

 notes are not equalled by those of any other North American bird. We know of 

 none, among our native feathered songsters, whose song resembles, or can be com- 

 pared with it. 



"By the time these birds have reached, in their spring migrations, the 40th parallel 

 of latitude, they no longer move in large flocks, but have begun to separate into small 

 parties, and finally into pairs. In New England the Bobolink treats us to no such con- 

 certs as those described by Audubon, where many voices join in creating their peculiar 

 jingling melody. When they first appear, usually after the middle of May, they are in 

 small parties, composed of either sex, absorbed in their courtships and overflowing with 

 song. When two or three male Bobolinks, decked out in their gayest spring apparel, 

 are paying their attentions to the same drab-colored female, contrasting so strikingly 

 in her sober brown dfess, their performances are quite entertaining, each male endeavor- 

 ing to outsing the other. The female appears coy and retiring, keeping closely to the 

 ground, but always attended by the several aspirants for her affection. After a contest, 

 often quite exciting, the rivalries are adjusted, the rejected suitors are driven off by their 

 more fortunate competitor, and the happy pair begin to put in order a new home. , It 

 is in these love quarrels that their song appears to the greatest advantage. They pour 

 OHt incessantly their strains of quaint but charming music, now on the ground, now on 

 the wing, now on the top of a fence, a low bush, or the swaying stalk of a plant that 

 bends with their weight. The great length of their song, the immense number of short 

 and variable notes of which it is composed, the volubility and confused rapidity with 

 which they are poured forth, the eccentric breaks, in the midst of which we detect the 

 words bob-o-link so distinctly enunciated, unite to form a general result to which we 

 can find no parallel in any of the musical performances of our other song-birds. It is 



' See Wilson Flagg. "Birds and Seasons of New England," p. 46 ff. 



