Evening star., 1932-05-14
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

How much music there is in mere
! whistling!" wrcte Walt Whitman in
one of his prose moments.
An American professor was to get
himself a great deal of publicity a
half century later by declaring that
"only morons whistle"
The poet, however, didn't know about
that, and he wouldn't have minded II
he had.
He spoke particularly of the birds,
those eternal songSters, whose music Is,
after all, Just plain whistling.
Those who abhor human whistling
should think of what the birds do.
Mere whistling," as Whitman put it,
| ''is four-f1fths of the utterance of birds.
There are all sorts and styles. For the
last half hour now. while l have been
sitting here, some feathered fellow
away off in the bushes has been re-
peating over and over again what I
may call a kind of throbbing whistle" /"
This poet, who could just as well have
been called a Washingtonian as not,
perhaps better, wrote most of his ma
ture notes on the spot.
LAS finish this, seated on log close
by the pond edge, much chirping and
trilling in the distance, and feathered
recluSe in the woods nearby is singing
dellclouSly-not many notes. but full of
music Of almost human Sympathy-con-
tlnuing for long, long time"
Whitman discovered what all people
find out who listen to bird songs, that
their two favorite concert hours are the
, first and last of daylight.
He found woody place" he tells
| us, near creek, where the birds loved
| to congregate
Especially at the beginning of the
! day, and again at the ending l was
sure to get there the most copious bird
| concerts"
The poet was not a precise handler
of words, such a phrase as "copious
/ bird concerts" is somewhat crude Eng
/ lish, but at least it had the merit Of
being perfectly clear. No modern read
er is in doubt for a second what he
meant.
He once posed himself with the fol-
lowing question: Which is the best bird
singing, the first or the lattermoSt"?
Like many listener before and after
MIN. he chose the concert at dusk as the
! most beautiful
The first always exhilarated and
! perhaps seemed more Joyous and
| stronger" he wrote, but I always felt
the sunset or late afternoon sounds
more penetrating and sweeter-seemed
to touch the soul-often the evening
thrushes, two or three of them, re-
| sponGing and perhaps blending.
| Ihough missed some of the morn
ings, found myself getting to be quite
strictly punctual at the evening
utterances."
The birds offer the city and suburban
dweller one OF his finest opportunities
| for Nature observance; he does not
have to go to pondside or forest. but
! the birds come to him, and he listens,
as to the finest music.
1t must be admitted that if the birds
were as persistent and as blatant as
] some human whiStlerS there would be
no living with them; but the fact is
that even the noisest Of them is weak
! compared with some of the juvenile
| lungs Justify at work on the latest fox
trot love song.
The robin is about as shrill a bird as
| there Is, especially when he is engaged
| in that popular redbreast paStime
calling for rain" This is mixture
of clucks and clacks, of whistles cut
off sharp. and of trillS that begin but
never end.
When a robin is busily calling for
| rain" he comes as near as a bird can
to annoying a human listener That
| Is, If one happens to concentrate on the
! bird calls, and on nothing else, he will
wonder how one comparatively small
| creature can make so much noise and
| why he does it.