BIRD-SONGS 



an oriole, and a wood thrush, each of which had a 

 song of its own that far exceeded any other. I stood 

 one day by a trout-stream, and suspended my fish- 

 ing for several minutes to watch a song sparrow 

 that was singing on a dry limb before me. He had 

 five distinct songs, each as markedly different from 

 the others as any human songs, which he repeated 

 one after the other. He may have had a sixth or 

 a seventh, but he bethought himself of some busi- 

 ness in the next field, and flew away before he had 

 exhausted his repertory. I once had a letter from 

 Robert Louis Stevenson, who said he had read an 

 account I had written of the song of the English 

 blackbird. He said I might as well talk of the song 

 of man ; that every blackbird had its own song ; and 

 then he told me of a remarkable singer he used to 

 hear somewhere amid the Scottish hills. But his 

 singer was, of course, an exception ; twenty-four 

 blackbirds out of every twenty-five probably sing 

 the same song, with no appreciable variations : but 

 the twenty-fifth may show extraordinary powers. I 

 told Stevenson that his famous singer had probably 

 been to school to some nightingale on the Continent 

 or in southern England. I might have told him of the 

 robin I once heard here that sang with great spirit 

 and accuracy the song of the brown thrasher, or of 

 another that had the note of the whip-poor-will 

 interpolated in the regular robin song, or of still 

 another that had the call of the quail. In each case 

 45 



