Identifier: birdcraftfield00wrig (find matches)
Title: Birdcraft : a field book of two hundred song, game, and water birds
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Wright, Mabel Osgood, 1859-1934 Fuertes, Louis Agassiz, 1874-1927
Subjects: Birds -- United States
Publisher: New York : Macmillan Co.
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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g and dropping again, others rising Lark-likeuntil the distant notes sound like the tinkling of anancient clavichord. Then, while you are gazing skyward,from the choke-cherry tree above your head will come thehurried syllables in which Mr. Burroughs interprets thesong: Ha! Ha! Ha! I must have my fun, Miss Silver-thimble, if I break every heart in the meadow, see, see, see!Meanwhile, the grass is full of nests and brown mothers,neither of which you see, for you are wholly entranced bythe song. Bryants poem on Robert of Lincoln contains a gooddescription of the birds plumage, but is too precise andmeasured to express the rapture of the song. It may de-scribe a stuffed Bobolink, but never a wild, living one. Wil-son Flaggs verses on The OLincon Family, one of whichI quote, are in truer key: — Every ones a funny fellow; every ones a little mellow;Follow, follow, follow, follow, oer the hill and in the hollow.Merrily, merrily, there they hie; now they rise and now they fly; 166 PLATE 35.
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BOBOLINK.1. Male. 2. Female. Length, C.50-7 inches. SONG-BIRDS. Cowbird They cross and turn, and in and out, and down the middle and wheel about.With a Phew, shew, Wadolincon ; listen to me, Bobolincon !Happys the wooing thats speedily doing, thats speedily doing,Thats merry and over with the bloom of the clover;Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, follow, follow me ! Tlie prose writers vie with the poets in singing the Bobo-links praises, their own words turning to music under hisspell. Listen to what Thoreau says of the song: It isas if he (the bird) touched his harp with a vase of liquidmelody, and when he lifted it out the notes fell like bubblesfrom the strings. ... away he launches, and the meadowis all bespattered with melody. What matters it to us who hear his song in the north ifthe singer, in his migrations, is at war with the rice-growersof warmer regions ? Here he is the peerless musician, whomno one should wittingly destroy; and yet we buy Eeed-birds, four on a skewer, f

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