BIRD-SONGS 



next time, a few years later, I heard the song in 

 company with a friend. Dr. Clara Barrus. Let 

 me give the woman's impression of the song as she 

 afterward wrote it up for a popular journal. 



" The sunset light was flooding all this May love- 

 liness of field and farm and distant wood; song 

 sparrows were blithely pouring out happiness by the 

 throatf ul ; peepers were piping and toads trilling, and 

 we thought it no hardship to wait in such a place till 

 the dusk should gather, and the wary woodcock an- 

 nounce his presence. But hark! while yet 'tis light, 

 only a few rods distant, I hear that welcome ' seap . . . 

 seap,' and lo ! a chipper and a chirr, and past us he 

 flies, — a direct, slanting upward flight, somewhat 

 labored, — his bill showing long against the reddened 

 sky. ' He has something in his mouth,' I start to say, 

 when I bethink me what a long bill he has. Around, 

 above us he flies in wide, ambitious circles, the while 

 we are enveloped, as it were, in that hurried chip- 

 pering sound — fine, elusive, now near, now distant. 

 How rapid is the flight ! Now it sounds faster and 

 faster, ' like a whiplash flashed through the air,' said 

 my friend; up, up he soars, till he becomes lost to 

 sight at the instant that his song ends in that last 

 mad ecstasy that just precedes his alighting." 



The meadowlark sings in a level flight, half hov- 

 ering in the air, giving voice to a rapid medley of 

 lark-like notes. The goldfinch also sings in a level 

 flight, beating the air slowly with its wings broadly 

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