360 ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SONG-BIRDS. 
summer songster of great brilliancy. So is the 
tanager. I judge there is no European thrush 
that, in the pure charm of melody and hymn- 
like serenity and spirituality, equals our wood 
and hermit thrushes, as there is no bird there 
that, in simple lingual excellence, approaches 
our bobolink. 
The European cuckoo makes more music 
than ours, and their robin-redbreast is a better 
singer than the allied species, to wit, the blue- 
bird, with us. But it is mainly in the larks and 
warblers that the European birds are richer in 
songsters than are ours. We have an army of 
small wood-warblers,—no less than forty spe- 
cies,—but most of them have faint chattering 
or lisping songs that escape all but the most at- 
tentive ear, and these spend the summer far to 
the north. Our two wagtails are our most brill- 
lant warblers, if we except the kinglets, which 
are northern birds in summer, and the Ken- 
tucky warbler, which is a southern bird; but 
they do not match the English blackcap, or 
white-throat, or garden warbler, to say noth- 
ing of the nightingale, though Audubon 
thought our large-billed water-thrush, or wag- 
tail, equaled that famous bird. It is certainly 
a brilhant songster, but most provokingly brief; 
the ear is arrested by a sudden joyous burst 
of melody proceeding from the dim aisles 
along which some wild brook has its way, 
but just as you say “ Listen!” it ceases. I 
hear and see the bird every season, along a 
rocky stream that flows through a deep 
chasm amid a wood of hemlock and pine. 
As I sit at the foot of some cascade, or on 
the brink of some little dark eddying pool 
above it, this bird darts by me up or down 
the stream, or alights near by upon a rock or 
stone at the edge of the water. Its speckled 
breast, its dark olive-colored back, its teeter- 
ing, mincing gait, like that of a sandpiper, and 
its sharp c/z¢, like the click of two pebbles under 
water, are characteristic features. Then its 
quick, ringing song, which you are sure pres- 
ently to hear, suggests something so bright 
and silvery that it seems almost to light up, 
for a brief moment, the dim retreat. If this 
strain were only sustained and prolonged like 
the nightingale’s, there would be good grounds 
for Audubon’s comparison. Its cousin, the 
wood wagtail, or golden-crowned thrush of 
the older ornithologists, and golden-crowned 
accentor of the later,—a common bird in all our 
woods,—has a similar strain, which it delivers 
as it were surreptitiously, and in the most 
precipitate manner, while on the wing high 
above the tree-tops. It is a kind of wood- 
lark, practicing and rehearsing on the sly. 
When the modest songster is ready to come 
‘out and give all a chance to hear his full and 
completed strain, the European wood-lark 
will need to look to his laurels. These two 
birds are our best warblers, and yet they are 
probably seldom heard, except by persons who 
know and admire them. If the two kinglets 
could also be included in our common New 
England summer residents, our warbler music 
would only pale before the song of Philomela 
herself. The English redstart evidently sur- 
passes ours as a songster, and we have no bird 
to match the English wood-lark above referred 
to, which is said to be but little inferior to the 
sky-lark ; but, on the other hand, besides the 
sparrows and vireos already mentioned, they 
have no songsters to match our oriole, our 
orchard starling, our cat-bird, our brown thrash- 
er (only second to the mocking-bird), our che- 
wink, our snow-bird, our cow-bunting, our bob- 
olink, and our yellow-breastedchat. As regards 
the swallows of the two countries, the advantage 
is rather onthe sideof the American. Ourchim- 
ney-swallow, with his incessant, silvery, rat- 
tling chipper, evidently makes more music than 
the corresponding house-swallow of Europe ; 
while our purple martin is not represented in 
the Old World avi-fauna at all. And yet it is 
probably true that a dweller in England hears 
more bird-music throughout the year than a 
dweller in this country, and that which, in 
some respects, is of a superior order. 
In the first place, there is not so much of 
it lost “upon the desert air,” upon the wild, 
unlistening solitudes. The English birds are 
more domestic and familiar than ours; more 
directly and intimately associated with man; 
not, as a class, so withdrawn and lost in 
the great void of the wild and the unre- 
claimed. England is like a continent con- 
centrated—all the waste land, the barren 
stretches, the wildernesses left out. The birds 
are brought near together and near to man. 
Wood birds here are house and garden 
birds there. They find good pasturage and 
protection everywhere. A land of parks, 
and gardens, and hedge-rows, and game 
preserves, and a climate free from violent 
extremes—what a stage for the birds, and 
for enhancing the effect of their songs! How 
prolific they are, how abundant! If our 
songsters were hunted and trapped, by bird- 
fanciers and others, as the lark, and gold- 
finch, and mavis, etc., are in England, the 
race would soon become extinct. Then, as a 
rule, it is probably true that the British birds, 
as a class, have more voice than ours have, 
or certain qualities that make their songs more 
striking and conspicuous, such as greater 
vivacity and strength. They are less bright 
in plumage, but more animated in voice. 
They are not so recently out of the woods, 
and their strains have not that elusiveness 
and plaintiveness that ours have. They sing 
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