52 THE AUDUBON -BOCLCE TEN 
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restive, sportive Mimus, his rival in vigor, and superior in sweetness, of 
song. Several Yellow-breasted Chats interpolated their loud cat-calls, 
vehement whistlings, and croaking notes. These three, loudest of the 
songsters, well nigh drowned the voices of the smaller birds; but in the 
brief intervals—‘‘ between the acts”—were heard the fine and sweet, 
though plaintive, song of the little Field Sparrow, the pleasant notes of 
the Chewink, the rich whistlings of the Cardinal, and the clear, proud 
call of Bob White. Upon proceeding to the thickets and thus inter- 
rupting the louder songsters, the wondrously strong and vehement 
notes of the “Chickty-beaver Bird” or White-eyed Vireo greeted us 
from the tangled copse, and soon a song we had never heard before— 
the gabbling, sputtering harangue of Bell’s Vireo—attracted our atten- 
tion and, of course, our interest. In the more open woods marking the 
border of the inbes the several woodland species were noticed; there 
the Vermilion Tanager or Summer Red-bird warbled his Robin-like 
but fine and well-sustained song, the Blue-jays chuckled and screamed 
as they prowled among the branches, and gaudy Red-headed Wood- 
peckers flaunted their tri-colored livery as they sported about the trunks 
or occasional dead tree-tops. 
On the open prairie, comparative quiet reigned. The most numer- 
ous bird there was “Dick Cissel”’ (Spiza americana), who monopo- 
lized the iron-weeds, uttering his rude but agreeable ditty with such 
regularity and persistence that the general stillness seemed scarcely 
broken; hardly less numerous Henslow’s Buntings were likewise perched 
upon the weed-stalks, and their weak but emphatic se-wick sounded 
almost like a faint attempt at imitation of Dick Cissel’s song. The 
grasshopper-like wiry trill of the Yellow-winged Sparrow; the meander- 
ing, wavering warble of the Prairie Lark (Otocoris alpestris praticola)— 
coming apparently from nowhere, but in reality from a little speck 
floating far up in the blue sky,—and the sweet “peek—you can’t see me”’ 
of the Meadow-lark, completed the list of songs heard on the open 
prairie. Many kinds of birds besides those already described were seen, 
but to name them all would require too much space. We should not, 
however, omit to mention the elegant Swallow-tailed Kites, which now 
and then wheeled into view as they circled over the prairie, or their 
cousins and companions, the Mississippi Kites, soaring above them 
through the transparent atmosphere; nor must we forget a pair of 
croaking ravens who, after circling about for a short time over the 
border of the woods, flew away to the heavy timber in the Fox River 
bottoms. 
Early in the following August we paid a second visit to the same 
spot, and found a material change in its aspect. A season of universal 
drought having passed, the prairie, which before was comparatively 
brown and sober in its coloring, was bedecked with flowers of varied 
hue. The Mocking-birds, Brown Thrashers, Chats, and most of the 
