Bethel, Maine.
1912.
January 3 
(No. 3)
[January 3, 1912]

Song (?) of Parus hudsonicus

every now and then - once when he was within two yards 
of me on a bare twig - a succession of low notes some warbling 
quality, others rather sharp and staccato. I wonder if this 
could have been the so-called song which Wright, Allen and 
others have described. It certainly might have been fairly well 
expressed by Allen's suggested rendering wissipawiddlu only this 
was broken up into rather widely disconnected syllables thus: - 
wis-si-pa-wid-dlu or sometimes wis-wissi-pa-widdlu. 
It did not impress me as being especially musical. When I 
first heard it I mistook it for the loquacious soliloquy in 
which the Black-capped Chickadees indulges occasionally at every 
season and which is certainly not a song. This it resembled very 
closely. Perhaps, after all, it was not the "song" which the 
other observers just alluded to have reported but at all events 
it was new to my experience as far as Parus hudsonicus 
is concerned. The bird observed this morning gave it five or six times in all.