The charm of the songs of birds, like that of a nation's popular airs
and hymns, is so little a question of intrinsic musical excellence, and
so largely a matter of association and suggestion, or of subjective
coloring and reminiscence, that it is perhaps entirely natural for every
people to think their own feathered songsters the best. What music would
there not be to the homesick American, in Europe, in the simple and
plaintive note of our bluebird, or the ditty of our song sparrow, or the
honest carol of our robin; and what, to the European traveler in this
country, in the burst of the blackcap, or the redbreast, or the whistle
of the merlin! The relative merit of bird-songs can hardly be settled
dogmatically; I suspect there is very little of what we call music, or
of what could be noted on the musical scale, in even the best of them;
they are parts of nature, and their power is in the degree in which they
speak to our experience.
When the Duke of Argyll, who is a lover of the birds and a good
ornithologist, was in this country, he got the impression that our
song-birds were inferior to the British, and he refers to others of his
countrymen as of like opinion. No wonder he thought our robin inferior
in power to the missel thrush, in variety to the mavis, and in melody to
the blackbird! Robin did not and could not sing to his ears the song he
sings to ours. Then it is very likely true that his grace did not hear
the robin in the most opportune moment and season, or when the contrast
of his song with the general silence and desolation of nature is the
most striking and impressive. The nightingale needs to be heard at
night, the lark at dawn rising to meet the sun; and robin, if you would
know the magic of his voice, should be heard in early spring, when, as
the sun is setting, he carols steadily for ten or fifteen minutes from
the top of some near tree. There is perhaps no other sound in nature;
patches of snow linger here and there; the trees are naked and the earth
is cold and dead, and this contented, hopeful, reassuring, and withal
musical strain, poured out so freely and deliberately, fills the void
with the very breath and presence of the spring. It is a simple strain,
well suited to the early season; there are no intricacies in it, but its
honest cheer and directness, with its slight plaintive tinge, like that
of the sun gilding the treetops, go straight to the heart. The compass
and variety of the robin's powers are not to be despised either. A
German who has great skill in the musical education of birds told me
what I was surprised to hear, namely, that our robin surpasses the
European blackbird in capabilities of voice.
The duke does not mention by name all the birds he heard while in this
country. He was evidently influenced in his opinion of them by the fact
that our common sandpiper appeared to be a silent bird, whereas its
British cousin, the sandpiper of the lakes and streams of the Scottish
Highlands, is very loquacious, and the "male bird has a continuous and
most lively song." Either the duke must have seen our bird in one of its
silent and meditative moods, or else, in the wilds of Canada where his
grace speaks of having seen it, the sandpiper is a more taciturn bird
than it is in the States. True, its call-notes are not incessant, and it
is not properly a song-bird any more than the British species is; but it
has a very pretty and pleasing note as it flits up and down our summer
streams, or runs along on their gray, pebbly, and bowlder-strewn
shallows. I often hear its calling and piping at night during its spring
migratings. Indeed, we have no silent bird that I am aware of, though
our pretty cedar-bird has, perhaps, the least voice of any. A lady
writes me that she has heard the hummingbird sing, and says she is not
to be put down, even if I were to prove by the anatomy of the bird's
vocal organs that a song was impossible to it.
Argyll says that, though he was in the woods and fields of Canada and of
the States in the richest moment of the spring, he heard little of that
burst of song which in England comes from the blackcap, and the garden
warbler, and the whitethroat, and the reed warbler, and the common
wren, and (locally) from the nightingale. There is no lack of a burst of
song in this country (except in the remote forest solitudes) during the
richest moment of the spring, say from the 1st to the 20th of May, and
at times till near midsummer; moreover, more bird-voices join in it, as
I shall point out, than in Britain; but it is probably more fitful and
intermittent, more confined to certain hours of the day, and probably
proceeds from throats less loud and vivacious than that with which our
distinguished critic was familiar. The ear hears best and easiest what
it has heard before. Properly to apprehend and appreciate bird-songs,
especially to disentangle them from the confused murmur of nature,
requires more or less familiarity with them. If the duke had passed a
season with us in some _one_ place in the country, in New York or New
England, he would probably have modified his views about the silence of
our birds.
One season, early in May, I discovered an English skylark in full song
above a broad, low meadow in the midst of a landscape that possessed
features attractive to a great variety of our birds. Every morning for
many days I used to go and sit on the brow of a low hill that commanded
the field, or else upon a gentle swell in the midst of the meadow
itself, and listen to catch the song of the lark. The maze and tangle of
bird-voices and bird-choruses through which my ear groped its way
searching for the new song can be imagined when I say that within
hearing there were from fifteen to twenty different kinds of songsters,
all more or less in full tune. If their notes and calls could have been
materialized and made as palpable to the eye as they were to the ear, I
think they would have veiled the landscape and darkened the day. There
were big songs and little songs,--songs from the trees, the bushes, the
ground, the air,--warbles, trills, chants, musical calls, and squeals,
etc. Near by in the foreground were the catbird and the brown thrasher,
the former in the bushes, the latter on the top of a hickory. These
birds are related to the mockingbird, and may be called performers;
their songs are a series of vocal feats, like the exhibition of an
acrobat; they throw musical somersaults, and turn and twist and contort
themselves in a very edifying manner, with now and then a ventriloquial
touch. The catbird is the more shrill, supple, and feminine; the
thrasher the louder, richer, and more audacious. The mate of the latter
had a nest, which I found in a field under the spreading ground-juniper.
From several points along the course of a bushy little creek there came
a song, or a melody of notes and calls, that also put me out,--the
tipsy, hodge-podge strain of the polyglot chat, a strong, olive-backed,
yellow-breasted, black-billed bird, with a voice like that of a jay or a
crow that had been to school to a robin or an oriole,--a performer sure
to arrest your ear and sure to elude your eye. There is no bird so
afraid of being seen, or fonder of being heard.
The golden voice of the wood thrush that came to me from the border of
the woods on my right was no hindrance to the ear, it was so serene,
liquid, and, as it were, transparent: the lark's song has nothing in
common with it. Neither were the songs of the many bobolinks in the
meadow at all confusing,--a brief tinkle of silver bells in the grass,
while I was listening for a sound more like the sharp and continuous hum
of silver wheels upon a pebbly beach. Certain notes of the
red-shouldered starlings in the alders and swamp maples near by, the
distant barbaric voice of the great crested flycatcher, the jingle of
the kingbird, the shrill, metallic song of the savanna sparrow, and the
piercing call of the meadowlark, all stood more or less in the way of
the strain I was listening for, because every one had a touch of that
burr or guttural hum of the lark's song. The ear had still other notes
to contend with, as the strong, bright warble of the tanager, the richer
and more melodious strain of the rose-breasted grosbeak, the distant,
brief, and emphatic song of the chewink, the child-like contented warble
of the red-eyed vireo, the animated strain of the goldfinch, the softly
ringing notes of the bush sparrow, the rapid, circling, vivacious strain
of the purple finch, the gentle lullaby of the song sparrow, the
pleasing "wichery," "wichery" of the yellow-throat, the clear whistle of
the oriole, the loud call of the high-hole, the squeak and chatter of
swallows, etc. But when the lark did rise in full song, it was easy to
hear him athwart all these various sounds, first, because of the sense
of altitude his strain had,--its skyward character,--and then because of
its loud, aspirated, penetrating, unceasing, jubilant quality. It cut
its way to the ear like something exceeding swift, sharp, and copious.
It overtook and outran every other sound; it had an undertone like the
humming of multitudinous wheels and spindles. Now and then some turn
would start and set off a new combination of shriller or of graver
notes, but all of the same precipitate, out-rushing and down-pouring
character; not, on the whole, a sweet or melodious song, but a strong
and blithe one.
The duke is abundantly justified in saying that we have no bird in this
country, at least east of the Mississippi, that can fill the place of
the skylark. Our high, wide, bright skies seem his proper field, too.
His song is a pure ecstasy, untouched by any plaintiveness, or pride, or
mere hilarity,--a well-spring of morning joy and blitheness set high
above the fields and downs. Its effect is well suggested in this stanza
of Wordsworth:--
"Up with me! up with me into the clouds!
For thy song, Lark, is strong;
Up with me, up with me into the clouds!
Singing, singing,
With clouds and sky about thee ringing,
Lift me, guide me till I find
That spot which seems so to thy mind!"
But judging from Gilbert White's and Barrington's lists, I should say
that our bird-choir was a larger one, and embraced more good songsters,
than the British.
White names twenty-two species of birds that sing in England during the
spring and summer, including the swallow in the list. A list of the
spring and summer songsters in New York and New England, without naming
any that are characteristically wood-birds, like the hermit thrush and
veery, the two wagtails, the thirty or more warblers, and the solitary
vireo, or including any of the birds that have musical call-notes, and
by some are denominated songsters, as the bluebird, the sandpiper, the
swallow, the red-shouldered starling, the pewee, the high-hole, and
others, would embrace more names, though perhaps no songsters equal to
the lark and nightingale, to wit: the robin, the catbird, the Baltimore
oriole, the orchard oriole, the song sparrow, the wood sparrow, the
vesper sparrow, the social sparrow, the swamp sparrow, the purple finch,
the wood thrush, the scarlet tanager, the indigo-bird, the goldfinch,
the bobolink, the summer yellowbird, the meadowlark, the house wren, the
marsh wren, the brown thrasher, the chewink, the chat, the red-eyed
vireo, the white-eyed vireo, the Maryland yellow-throat, and the
rose-breasted grosbeak.
The British sparrows are for the most part songless. What a ditty is
that of our song sparrow, rising from the garden fence or the roadside
so early in March, so prophetic and touching, with endless variations
and pretty trilling effects; or the song of the vesper sparrow, full of
the repose and the wild sweetness of the fields; or the strain of the
little bush sparrow, suddenly projected upon the silence of the fields
or of the evening twilight, and delighting the ear as a beautiful scroll
delights the eye! The white-crowned, the white-throated, and the Canada
sparrows sing transiently spring and fall; and I have heard the fox
sparrow in April, when his song haunted my heart like some bright, sad,
delicious memory of youth,--the richest and most moving of all
sparrow-songs.
Our wren-music, too, is superior to anything of the kind in the Old
World, because we have a greater variety of wren-songsters. Our house
wren is inferior to the British house wren, but our marsh wren has a
lively song; while our winter wren, in sprightliness, mellowness,
plaintiveness, and execution, is surpassed by but few songsters in the
world. The summer haunts of this wren are our high, cool, northern
woods, where, for the most part, his music is lost on the primeval
solitude.
The British flycatcher, according to White, is a silent bird, while our
species, as the phœbe-bird, the wood pewee, the kingbird, the little
green flycatcher, and others, all have notes more or less lively and
musical. The great crested flycatcher has a harsh voice, but the
pathetic and silvery note of the wood pewee more than makes up for it.
White says the golden-crowned wren is not a song-bird in Great Britain.
The corresponding species here has a pleasing though not remarkable
song, which is seldom heard, however, except in its breeding haunts in
the north. But its congener, the ruby-crowned kinglet, has a rich,
delicious, and prolonged warble, which is noticeable in the Northern
States for a week or two in April or May, while the bird pauses to feed
on its way to its summer home.
There are no vireos in Europe, nor birds that answer to them. With us,
they contribute an important element to the music of our groves and
woods. There are few birds I should miss more than the red-eyed vireo,
with his cheerful musical soliloquy, all day and all summer, in the
maples and locusts. It is he, or rather she, that builds the exquisite
basket nest on the ends of the low, leafy branches, suspending it
between two twigs. The warbling vireo has a stronger, louder strain,
more continuous, but not quite so sweet. The solitary vireo is heard
only in the deep woods, while the white-eyed is still more local or
restricted in its range, being found only in wet, bushy places, whence
its vehement, varied, and brilliant song is sure to catch the dullest
ear.
The goldfinches of the two countries, though differing in plumage, are
perhaps pretty evenly matched in song; while our purple finch, or
linnet, I am persuaded, ranks far above the English linnet, or lintie,
as the Scotch call it. In compass, in melody, in sprightliness, it is a
remarkable songster. Indeed, take the finches as a family, they
certainly furnish more good songsters in this country than in Great
Britain. They furnish the staple of our bird-melody, including in the
family the tanager and the grosbeaks, while in Europe the warblers
lead. White names seven finches in his list, and Barrington includes
eight, none of them very noted songsters, except the linnet. Our list
would include the sparrows above named, and the indigo-bird, the
goldfinch, the purple finch, the scarlet tanager, the rose-breasted
grosbeak, the blue grosbeak, and the cardinal bird. Of these birds, all
except the fox sparrow and the blue grosbeak are familiar summer
songsters throughout the Middle and Eastern States. The indigo-bird is a
midsummer and an all-summer songster of great brilliancy. So is the
tanager. I judge there is no European thrush that, in the pure charm of
melody and hymn-like serenity and spirituality, equals our wood and
hermit thrushes, as there is no bird there that, in simple lingual
excellence, approaches our bobolink.
The European cuckoo makes more music than ours, and their robin
redbreast is a better singer than the allied species, to wit, the
bluebird, with us. But it is mainly in the larks and warblers that the
European birds are richer in songsters than are ours. We have an army of
small wood-warblers,--no less than forty species,--but most of them have
faint chattering or lisping songs that escape all but the most attentive
ear, and then they spend the summer far to the north. Our two wagtails
are our most brilliant warblers, if we except the kinglets, which are
Northern birds in summer, and the Kentucky warbler, which is a Southern
bird; but they probably do not match the English blackcap, or
whitethroat, or garden warbler, to say nothing of the nightingale,
though Audubon thought our large-billed water-thrush, or wagtail,
equaled that famous bird. It is certainly a brilliant songster, but most
provokingly brief; the ear is arrested by a sudden joyous burst of
melody proceeding from the dim aisles along which some wild brook has
its way, but just as you say "Listen!" it ceases. I hear and see the
bird every season along a rocky stream that flows through a deep chasm
amid a wood of hemlock and pine. As I sit at the foot of some cascade,
or on the brink of some little dark eddying pool above it, this bird
darts by me, up or down the stream, or alights near me, upon a rock or
stone at the edge of the water. Its speckled breast, its dark
olive-colored back, its teetering, mincing gait, like that of a
sandpiper, and its sharp _chit_, like the click of two pebbles under
water, are characteristic features. Then its quick, ringing song, which
you are sure presently to hear, suggests something so bright and silvery
that it seems almost to light up, for a brief moment, the dim retreat.
If this strain were only sustained and prolonged like the nightingale's,
there would be good grounds for Audubon's comparison. Its cousin, the
wood wagtail, or golden-crowned thrush of the older ornithologists, and
golden-crowned accentor of the later,--a common bird in all our
woods,--has a similar strain, which it delivers as it were
surreptitiously, and in the most precipitate manner, while on the wing,
high above the treetops. It is a kind of wood-lark, practicing and
rehearsing on the sly. When the modest songster is ready to come out
and give all a chance to hear his full and completed strain, the
European wood-lark will need to look to his laurels. These two birds are
our best warblers, and yet they are probably seldom heard, except by
persons who know and admire them. If the two kinglets could also be
included in our common New England summer residents, our warbler music
would only pale before the song of Philomela herself. The English
redstart evidently surpasses ours as a songster, and we have no bird to
match the English wood-lark above referred to, which is said to be but
little inferior to the skylark; but, on the other hand, besides the
sparrows and vireos, already mentioned, they have no songsters to match
our oriole, our orchard starling, our catbird, our brown thrasher
(second only to the mockingbird), our chewink, our snowbird, our
cow-bunting, our bobolink, and our yellow-breasted chat. As regards the
swallows of the two countries, the advantage is rather on the side of
the American. Our chimney swallow, with his incessant, silvery, rattling
chipper, evidently makes more music than the corresponding house swallow
of Europe; while our purple martin is not represented in the Old World
avifauna at all. And yet it is probably true that a dweller in England
hears more bird-music throughout the year than a dweller in this
country, and that which, in some respects, is of a superior order.
In the first place, there is not so much of it lost "upon the desert
air," upon the wild, unlistening solitudes. The English birds are more
domestic and familiar than ours; more directly and intimately
associated with man; not, as a class, so withdrawn and lost in the great
void of the wild and the unreclaimed. England is like a continent
concentrated,--all the waste land, the barren stretches, the
wildernesses, left out. The birds are brought near together and near to
man. Wood-birds here are house and garden birds there. They find good
pasturage and protection everywhere. A land of parks, and gardens, and
hedge-rows, and game preserves, and a climate free from violent
extremes,--what a stage for the birds, and for enhancing the effect of
their songs! How prolific they are, how abundant! If our songsters were
hunted and trapped by bird-fanciers and others, as the lark, and
goldfinch, and mavis, etc., are in England, the race would soon become
extinct. Then, as a rule, it is probably true that the British birds as
a class have more voice than ours have, or certain qualities that make
their songs more striking and conspicuous, such as greater vivacity and
strength. They are less bright in plumage, but more animated in voice.
They are not so recently out of the woods, and their strains have not
that elusiveness and plaintiveness that ours have. They sing with more
confidence and copiousness, and as if they, too, had been touched by
civilization.
Then they sing more hours in the day, and more days in the year. This is
owing to the milder and more equable climate. I heard the skylark
singing above the South Downs in October, apparently with full spring
fervor and delight. The wren, the robin, and the wood-lark sing
throughout the winter, and in midsummer there are perhaps more vocal
throats than here. The heat and blaze of our midsummer sun silence most
of our birds.
There are but four songsters that I hear with any regularity after the
meridian of summer is past, namely, the indigo-bird, the wood or bush
sparrow, the scarlet tanager, and the red-eyed vireo, while White names
eight or nine August songsters, though he speak of the yellow-hammer
only as persistent. His dictum, that birds sing as long as nidification
goes on, is as true here as in England. Hence our wood thrush will
continue in song over into August if, as frequently happens, its June
nest has been broken up by the crows or squirrels.
The British songsters are more vocal at night than ours. White says the
grasshopper lark chirps all night in the height of summer. The
sedge-bird also sings the greater part of the night. A stone thrown into
the bushes where it is roosting, after it has become silent, will set it
going again. Other British birds, besides the nightingale, sing more or
less at night.
In this country the mockingbird is the only regular night-singer we
have. Other songsters break out occasionally in the middle of the night,
but so briefly that it gives one the impression that they sing in their
sleep. Thus I have heard the hair-bird, or chippie, the kingbird, the
oven-bird, and the cuckoo fitfully in the dead of the night, like a
schoolboy laughing in his dreams.
On the other hand, there are certain aspects in which our songsters
appear to advantage. That they surpass the European species in
sweetness, tenderness, and melody I have no doubt; and that our
mockingbird, in his native haunts in the South, surpasses any bird in
the world in fluency, variety, and execution is highly probable. That
the total effect of his strain may be less winning and persuasive than
the nocturne of the nightingale is the only question in my mind about
the relative merits of the two songsters. Bring our birds together as
they are brought together in England, let all our shy wood-birds--like
the hermit thrush, the veery, the winter wren, the wood wagtail, the
water wagtail, the many warblers, the several vireos--become birds of
the groves and orchards, and there would be a burst of song indeed.
Bates, the naturalist of the Amazon, speaks of a little thrush he used
to hear in his rambles that showed the American quality to which I have
referred. "It is a much smaller and plainer-colored bird," he says,
"than our [the English] thrush, and its song is not so loud, varied, or
so long sustained; here the tone is of a sweet and plaintive quality,
which harmonizes well with the wild and silent woodlands, where alone it
is heard in the mornings and evenings of sultry, tropical days."
I append parallel lists of the better-known American and English
song-birds, marking in each with an asterisk, those that are probably
the better songsters; followed by a list of other American songsters,
some of which are not represented in the British avifauna:--
_Old England._ _New England._
*Wood-lark. Meadowlark.
Song-thrush. *Wood thrush.
*Jenny Wren. House wren.
Willow wren. *Winter wren.
*Redbreast. Bluebird.
*Redstart. Redstart.
Hedge-sparrow. *Song sparrow.
Yellow-hammer. *Fox sparrow.
*Skylark. Bobolink.
Swallow. Swallow.
*Blackcap. Wood wagtail.
Titlark. Titlark (spring and fall).
*Blackbird. Robin.
Whitethroat. *Maryland yellow-throat.
Goldfinch. Goldfinch.
Greenfinch. *Wood sparrow.
Reed-sparrow. *Vesper sparrow.
Linnet. *Purple finch.
*Chaffinch. Indigo-bird.
*Nightingale. Water wagtail.
Missel thrush. *Hermit thrush.
Great titmouse. Savanna sparrow.
Bullfinch. Chickadee.