CONCORD, 
At intervals through the forenoon as I was at work 
near the cabin, I heard the ki-ki-ki-ki, ki-keer of the mys¬ 
terious "Kicker" coming from near the middle of the Great 
Meadow. Soon after sunset the bird began again and sang 
steadily up to the time I went to bed. He had apparently 
come a little nearer, although as I walked along the river 
path to Bensen's Landing I could with difficulty catch the 
first 11 chur " or keer of his song. What was my surprise, 
therefore, to find that as I continued on my walk and turned 
my back to the river, I carried the sound of the ki, ki far 
inland without seeming to lose much of its strength. I 
actually hear it with reasonable distinctness when I reached 
Davis's Hill, although this point is nearly half-a-mile dis¬ 
tant from Bensen's landing, with a pine-covered range of 
hills between. 
There is another peculiarity about the song of the 
"Kicker" which I remember to have noted the season when the 
bird was so common about Cambridge and which impresses me 
constantly here now. It is that the sound changes continually 
in volume, the increase and decrease being sometimes gradual 
and sometimes abrupt. Ordinarily every fourth or fifth 
repetition comes loud and distinct, but sometimes an especially 
distinct repetition succeeds a particularly faint one. Gilbert 
thought this evening that the bird must be flying about 
