Morning journal and courier., 1881-08-11
Birds in the White Mountains.

. public safety should be paramount to all | other considerations. A. l Birds in the White Mountains. The Great Increase-A Bird With a Pc culiar Note.
 From Mir. Whites Lonesome Lake Papers, written to the New York Journal of Cons- ! naerce, we take the following very interesting | account of birds in the White Mountains: | There is bird on the banks of the Nile which utters peculiar note. It is long, | clear, melodious sound, interrupted by cer- I tain pauses and gurgles which give it some- what the effect of syllable enunciation. It ! has been the fancy of people in all countries and ages to express the notes of birds iu--i1u- man language. This Nile bird is said by the l Arabs of the desert and the fellaheen of ! Egypt to speak the praises of God in the ut terance Of the Mohammedan creed of the unity or oneness of the deity. So they l say he always sings the same sentence. I ~ naOulH; Ia Shereeh IEEdh which may 1 be freely translated ''Thou God art the l God, Thou hast partner' And in l the short golden twilight of Egypt, when the I brilliant green of the palm groves and the I golden yellow of the desert birds in the ! West have changed into an intense black. which lies against the evening sky sharp as ] a silhouette cutting, when the silence of an ] Egyptian evening fills the solemn atmos- pher6, the VO1ce or that Dlrd IS wonderfully thrilling and one can well listen and imagine ! that he does utter the words of praise which are but another form of Davids repeated cry, ''The Lord is King forever and ever" The custom of giving form in human lan- guage to the utterances of birds is invoIun- tary with us when we hear the same peculiar note steadily repeated many times But it is we'll worth noting that the voice of the bird seems to express wholly different sounds to different persons If half a dozen intelli- gent people were to listen for the first time to bird whose note was syllable, and with out consultation each person to express the sound in English letters, whether known words or mere sounding syllables, it is not probable that any two records would be at all alike. Some of the pathological books give us notes of birds expressed. Thus we read that a birds note IS Zee zee ga za-ze -ep.'' But to another person this note will
 seem to be wholly destitute of the hard sound of even the soft sound of s, and
 more correctly expressed by the liquid inter-
 mingling of and r. Hence I find no assist.
 ance in these books in recognizing the birds
 hereabouts from their notes. And the forest is SO dense around the lake that it is often
 impossible to see bird whose note hear.
 There are many birds which are great
 companions in otherwise lonesome times.
 For two years past the number and variety
 of songsters has greatly increased. When
 we discovered the lake ten or twelve years
 ago there were no birds hereabouts For
 two three years after building the first Of
 the cabins none appeared Then the robin, ,~
 so called, who always follows civilization,
 began to appear. He was not welcome. This
 thrush, which is admired by many and pro.
 tected by sentimental laws in some States
 is nuisance. He is dirty: bird in his habits,
 devourer of fruits and berries in immense
 quantities. 6 noisy, unmusical repeater of the same notes, and where, as in many of our large towns, he Is protected, he takes of cherries and strawberries. I am perfectly
 well aware that I hurt some persons preju- dices by this expression of opinion, but I speak feehngly, having for the past fifteen fifteen superbly bearing trees of four varie- ties, and never once in the whobe fifteen years been able to secure a quart of Apit at a time. Nine-tenths of the cherries Nave the first blush of red picked out of them &hy these abominable thieves. They are in thA trees twenty, thirty and forty at time, and the statute forbids killing them. The ground under the trees they keep strewed with the debris of half eaten fruit.
 It is luxury to live in a cabin where there is no law to forbid practicing with rife at this wretched fruit thief We have no fruit to protect, but every one that is killed here may prove 8 saving of half bushel of cher ries down in the valley.
 Swallows came suddenly year or two later in great numbers Probably they had
 
 unknown to humanity. For they were ap- parently passing over the mountains in their migration and swooped down into the basin, some hundreds of them, and spent an hour of a sunny day in wheeling swiftly over the water, feeding on the myriads of flies which swarmed on the surface, then, as if by given signal, rose high in the air and disappeared over the crest of the eastern hill.
 Next came the cedar bird wax wing, cherry bird, spider bird, or whatever of his many names you may choose to know him by. He is very pert familiar and tame bird, very beautiful in shape and color, silent, except for low thin whistle. A group of these birds will follow me all around the lake when I am casting near the shore and watch the flies and the taking of fish with as much ap parent interest as you could have yourself if you walked around. They sit on tamarak saplings only a few feet from me and keepu their low whistling and fit along as the boat drifts or row.
 The Whiskey Jack has deserted us For some years this bird was plentiful around the cabin and gave us some annoyance, for they would steal many things left lying on the piazza or the stump at the kitchen door, No- tably one after another large pieces of soap vanished mysteriously, and it was some time before we caught the true thieves. But they were beautiful bird, and so free from fear that we are sorry to miss them during the last three years.
 I do not intend catalogue of our feath- cred friends. They are more numerous this year than ever. But there is one newcomer who is welcome and whom I want to know, but have only heard without seeing. His voice is rich and clear silver, and his note rings over the lake with exceeding force and volume. I will not try to translate 1t into human expression, for it would be useless to try thus to convey any idea of it. It re- minded me when first heard it of the night npale as once heard him sing at Mola di 9aeta. But he sings in the daytime here. As evening approaches he and all the other birds are silent. Even the noisy robins hush heir tiresome calls as the sun goes behind Mount Kinsman. Only one bird continues vocal, and he is to me the most attractive of Ill. I suppose he is the sparrow, znown by some as the Peabody bird, because his note has been trans- ng with peabody, peabody But though have heard that bird often in the lower country, the note there is far less musical and than this birds note, and the syl- ables of that word are not remotely like the 'ound he pours out. He sits always far of, on the topmost point of some tall tree, above he surrounding forest, and once in two or shree minutes sends out @ long, very long pure, clear and far-reaching note, without ripple or interruption till toward the end, when he changes the key by very soft apse and the note dies away. You can't say whether it is mournful in it's prolonged melody or whether the lonesome character of the scene and the surrounding silence makes the voice seem to you like an expression of sadness never hear him in windy weather. It is only on still evenings he sings or speaks flor it has gotten to me to be like speech rather than song, and I often go out on the piazza as the twilight is passing into night, snd sit down and listen for him. And then ais voice comes across the lake full of music md very full of memories. For there were hose who used to listen to him with me whose ears are closed to what we call mel ,dy here; and memories are sometimes .oused very distinctly by the voices of birds .s t,r tla so,,rds of old familiar snncs