Birds of the same species generally all sing alike, but
I have observed numerous song sparrows with songs peculiarly their
own. Last season, the whole summer through, one sang about my
grounds like this: _swee-e-t, swee-e-t, swee-e-t, bitter._ Day
after day, from May to September, I heard this strain, which I
thought a simple but very profound summing-up of life, and wondered
how the little bird had learned it so quickly. The present season,
I heard another with a song equally original, but not so easily
worded. Among a large troop of them in April, my attention was
attracted to one that was a master songster,--some Shelley or
Tennyson among his kind. The strain was remarkably prolonged,
intricate, and animated, and far surpassed anything I ever before
heard from that source.
But the most noticeable instance of departure from the standard
song of a species I ever knew of was in the case of a wood thrush.
The bird sang, as did the sparrow, the whole season through, at the
foot of my lot near the river. The song began correctly and ended
correctly; but interjected into it about midway was a loud,
piercing, artificial note, at utter variance with the rest of the
strain. When my ear first caught this singular note, I started out,
not a little puzzled, to make, as I supposed, a new acquaintance,
but had not gone far when I discovered whence it proceeded. Brass
amid gold, or pebbles amid pearls, are not more out of place than
was this discordant scream or cry in the melodious strain of the
wood thrush.
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