BOBOLINK 245 



being sufficiently advanced, the atmosphere in the right 

 condition, these flashing, scintillating notes are struck 

 out from it where that dark mote disappears through 

 it, as sparks by a flint, with a tinkling sound. This 

 flashing, tinkling meteor bursts through the expectant 

 meadow air, leaving a train of tinkling notes behind. 

 Successive regiments of birds arrive and are disbanded 

 in our fields, like soldiers still wearing their regimen- 

 tals. I doubted at first if it were not a strain brought 

 on a few days in advance by an imitative catbird or 

 thrush (?) from where he had been staying. 



May 12, 1853. This, too, is the era of the bobolink, 

 now, when apple trees are ready to burst into bloom. 



May 17, 1853. The bobolink skims by before the 

 wind how far without motion of his wings ! sometimes 

 borne sidewise as he turns his head — for thus he can 

 fly — and tinkling, linking, incessantly all the way. 



May 25, 1857. It is interesting to hear the bobolinks 

 from the meadow sprinkle their lively strain along amid 

 the tree-tops as they fly over the wood above our heads. 

 It resounds in a novel manner through the aisles of the 

 wood, and at the end that fine buzzing, wiry note. 



June 1, 1857. I hear the note of a bobolink concealed 

 in the top of an apple tree behind me. Though this 

 bird's full strain is ordinarily somewhat trivial, this one 

 appears to be meditating a strain as yet unheard in 

 meadow or orchard. Paulo majora canamus. He is just 

 touching the strings of his theorbo, his glassichord, his 

 water organ, and one or two notes globe themselves and 

 fall in liquid bubbles from his teeming throat. It is as 

 if he touched his harp within a vase of liquid melody, 



