The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-06-30

alike in general character, and it takes an ear trained to detail to tell which is which. Add to these more general causes of confusion the fact that differ ent individuals of the same bird family often have slight idiosycrasies and vari- ations of songs, and the difficulty of identifying our multitudinous summer songsters by their notes becomes trebled.
 In my own endeavors to name birds from their songs I have derived much help from the somewhat whimsical translations that have been made by naturalists of various bird songs into their corresponding English phrases. For instance, after reading MT. Bur rough's charming description of the oven-bird or golden-crowned thrush and it's song, have never had the least difii- culty in naming it from that sweetly intense crescendo cry in the summer woods of Teacher teacher, teacher!" as if the bird were appealing with childish insistence to some prim, un- needing perceptress of a feathered school.
 A boy once asked me: What is that bird that sings SC much in the sum- mer, and goes, 'Rickety- -rickety- rick ety'?" I identified the songster at once by the boys literal rendering of it's phrase as the Maryland yellow-throat, and have ever since been unable to translate its song into any other Eng fish equivalent So if you would chance to catch this summer a rapid proclama- ton of weak-jointedness in bird lan- guage, you may jot down in your note- book that you have heard Maryland yellow-throat.
 The other morning woke up at dawn and heard a robins early carol. The song presently adjusted itself in my drowsy brain to an amusing but very expressive and exactly initiative Eng fish jungle, as follows:
 Amelia ChowCrow,
 Amelia Chow-Chow,
 Pretty Amelia,
 Pretty Amelia,
 Pretty Amelia Chow ChoW!"
 Now and then the bird varied it's song by reversing the order of phrases. It would cry with sweet, ringing reson- ance, ''Chow -chow" Then there would be a pause, followed by Amelia or Pretty Amelia" But the song was al ways some combination of the phrases I have named.
 I have often tried to make English of the impassioned, checking melody of melody of the boWKWKWKWKWK the bobolink, whose flute seems overfull of music so that the notes trip over each others heels as they rush out. But the birds language is too rapid for dis tinct enunciation in any tongue. He is like a feathered Demosthenes, with peb- bles in his mouth. But. fortunately, there is no other strain like his in all birddom, so that it does not need trans lation in order that the bird student may know It.
 The flycatcher is another of our wood birds whose note there is no mistaking. Not much of a singer is he, to be sure. with his dry, crisp, two-syllabled phrase. But you may know him, so to speak, by his destination, since all summer long he with a curiously positive futilty, that he is for Quebec, Quebec a city he will never see, since early in October he is off for a climate very diff ferent from that of Canada.
 The red-winged blackbird has a very 1lCn ana pOStlVe song IndC IS edSlly phrased. There is a reedlike quality in it, resembling the tone of a clarinet, and when the bird sits in the fork of a swaying alder in some rank swamp With ihs shoulders flashing in the sun and cries, "A romp for me! A romp for mel" you cannot easily mistake his identity. But there is often such cho- rus of these gregarious and sociable | birds that the individual notes are quite | lost track of, and you can hear nothing |! but a rich potpourri of sound, like a l assemblage of contraltos. |
 The Baltimore oriole has fine, clear | note, but his song is of little variety. l He sits in an em tree, near his pendent | nest, where the hidden female broods | ler eggs. and repeats "Chuckie, chuckie, | chuckie." all the beautiful June day. One wishes those exquisite notes could | be prolonged into a, song of greater ex- tent. eYt even in their persistent mo- notony they add an inexpressible charm Q the soft, fragrant air and blue skies | If early summer.
 Our night singer, the whippoorwill | 'epeats a phrase which no one can mis- .ake. I do not see how any one could