CO CORD 
1907 
eCt-t. ; ,'U.S't) | hQ 
mm. 
Call of 
v«enr 
Shea I awoke this norning, the sky near the horizon 
line in the East was glowing with the light of approaching 
dawn but the woods still slumbered in almost total darkness. 
Two birds -ere 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 drubt. It is a short, 
staccato cry, commonly monosyllabic but not infrequently 
divided into two syllables, given with either a rising or 
a foiling inflection, usually clear and resonant but some¬ 
times guttural and occasionally even hrrsh or strident. 
Although thus variable in form and tone, it ssesses almost 
always a wild, almo t weird quality which makes it a pecul¬ 
iarly 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 
i .tensity when coming from tw: 2 at hand. I have heard it 
only by night nd oftenest at Lake Umgagog, late in August 
or early in . .tember when heavy flights of W xblers were 
passing. Often when lying wakeful in my tent at Pin© 
f’olnt have I listened to it for hours in succession, study¬ 
ing 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 the 
tree-t&ps and aovi ig swiftly southward. 
