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Concord, Mass. 
1907, 
August 20 
x When I awoke this morning the sky near the horizon line 
in the east was glowing with the light of approaching dawn, hut 
the woods still slumbered in almost total darkness. Two birds were 
calling to one another among the oaks on the hillside just above 
the cabin, both uttering a note familiar to me since boyhood but 
concerning the authorship of which I have been hitherto in doubt. 
It is a short, staccato cry, commonly monosyllabic, but not in¬ 
frequently divided into two syllables, given with either a rising 
or a falling inflection, usually clear and resonant but sometimes 
guttural and occasionally even harsh or strident. Although thus 
variable in form and tone it possesses nearly always a wild, almost 
weird quality which makes it a peculiarly interesting and indeed 
attractive sound. It is so very loud and penetrating as to carry 
fully a mile when the air is still and it is positively startling 
in its abrupt intensity when coming from near at hand. I have 
heard it only by night and oftenest at Lake Umbagog, late in August 
or early in September when heavy flights of Warblers were passing. 
Often -mien lying wakeful in my tent at Pine Point have I listened 
to it for hours in succession, studying its alternating variations 
of inflection and intonation and speculating fruitlessly as to the 
identity of its author. On these -occasions it came invariably from 
birds which quite evidently were on wing at no great height above 
