Identifier: howtoattractbird00bla (find matches)
Title: How to attract the birds : and other talks about bird neighbors
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Blanchan, Neltje, 1865-1918
Subjects: Birds Bird attracting
Publisher: New York : Doubleday Page
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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so many notes thatone can scarcely recognize the broken fragments oftheir real song. But after the new suit of clothes iswell on, whether it is joy in the possession of themor a returned sense of physical well-being, in earlyautumn a second singing usually begins — not solong, nor so exuberant, nor so pleasing, but still awelcome reminder of spring joys. THE DEVELOPMENT OF BIRD ANDHUMAN MUSIC Whether the evolution of bird music has paral-leled that of our own is not yet a settled questionamong scientists, but a great mass of evidence seemsto prove that it has followed similar lines, and thatits tendency is still toward the same ideal. Wehave already noted that it is the quality of voice,not so much the intervals of the melodic scale, thatdifferentiates avian from human music. That senseof rhythm is variously developed among birds werealize on comparing the Carolina wrens preciselyemphasized beats with the jumbled jargon of thatrollicking polyglot, the Maryland yellow-throat. All 136
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One of our sweetest though unappreciated songsters — the rose-breasted grosbeak Songs Without Words the intervals of the major and minor scales that wecan write, as well as some too elusive to record, areused by birds in perfection of tone. They employvery effectively repetitions of notes and phrases,sometimes so combined as to produce a formaltheme,—some birds of quite limited powers thus pro-ducing the most pleasing results. They trill on twonotes or more, introducing a finer tremolo than apipe-organs. Antiphonals are indulged In by sev-eral of the tuneful sparrows, chewinks and meadow-larks; in short, they make unconscious use of musi-cal intervals and methods that men have formulatedinto laws. Because they are laws, we are just be-ginning to realize that they may be of wide enoughapplication to include the birds music. Above all,there is a purity, an exquisite quality of a birdssong, with which no other on earth is to be com-pared. That music such as theirs can be writtenat al

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