Call notes 
of 
Redpoll 
Song 
can be absolutely no doubt for I saw it unmistakably dozens 
of times, and for the first time in my life. As the birds 
were all collected together within the space of a square 
yard or less, they made the leaves fly in showers and soon 
uncovered the ground, where they appeared to find plenty of 
food which, I inferred, must be birch seeds, as I did not 
see them feeding anywhere except under birches. 
During most of the time I was watching this flock of 
Redpolls, their calls came to my ears almost incessantly but 
I did not hear any of them sing , (On the morning of March 30 
I heard the full song twice near at hand. It was a smooth, 
sweet trill — tswee eeeee — pitched high and aLl in [the; same 
key, I think). The flight call was used oftenest, even when 
the birds were perched. It is rather hard or woodeny, or 
like the sound of small pebbles striking against one another; 
yet it is subject to soft and rather sweet modulations. I 
should write it tch-tche or tch-tch&-tche. Sometimes there 
is but one syllable — tche . A much sweeter note, less 
often heard and usually given when the bird is perched in a 
tree top, is pee- e, very like the may- be of our Goldfinch, 
This call has a rising inflection and is very pleasing in 
quality. 
Ho^p p Sparrows Late this afternoon, as I was sitting in my chamber, 
I heard a sudden clamor of English Sparrow voices and looking 
out the front window saw a large flock of the obnoxious birds 
sitting in clusters in the forsythia bushes by the rock. It 
did not occur to me to count them but there could not have 
