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pick up the grain that leaks out of the wheat- 
trains, and sows the track from Dakota to 
the seaboard. Probably the wind which they 
might try to face in getting up is the prime 
cause of their being struck. One does not 
think of the locomotive as a bird-destroyer, 
though it is well known that many of the 
smaller animals often fall beneath it. 
A very interesting feature of our bird- 
songs is the wing-song, or song of ecstasy. 
It is not the gift of many of our birds. In- 
deed, less than a dozen species are known to 
me as ever singing on the wing. It seems to 
spring from more intense excitement and 
self-abandonment than the ordinary song de- 
livered from the perch. When the bird’s joy 
reaches the point of rapture it is literally car- 
ried off its feet, and up it goes into the air, 
pouring out its song as a rocket pours its 
sparks. The skylark and the bobolink habit- 
ually do this, but a few others of our birds 
do it only on occasions. Last summer, up in 
the Catskills, I added another name to my 
list of ecstatic singers—that of the vesper- 
sparrow. Several times I heard a new song in 
the air, and caught a glimpse of the bird as 
it dropped back to the earth. My attention 
would be attracted bya succession of hurried, 
chirping notes, followed by a brief burst of 
song, then by the vanishing form of the bird. 
One day I was lucky enough to see the bird 
as it was rising to its climax in the air, and 
identified it as the vesper-sparrow. The burst 
of song that crowned the upward flight of 
seventy-five or one hundred feet was brief; 
but it was brilliant and striking, and entirely 
unlike the leisurely chant of the bird while 
upon the ground. It suggested a lark, but was 
less buzzing or humming. The preliminary 
chirping notes, uttered faster and faster as 
the bird mounted in the air, were like the 
trail of sparks which a rocket emits before 
its grand burst of color at the top of its 
flight. 
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