veral highly
curious and startling cries, the concluding one of which sometimes
suggested the cackle of a robin. All this he repeated again and again
with the utmost fervor. He could not have been more enthusiastic if he
had been making the sweetest music in the world. And I confess that I
thought he had reason to be proud of his work. The introduction of
wing-made sounds in the middle of a vocal performance was of itself a
stroke of something like genius. It put me in mind of the firing of
cannons as an accompaniment to the Anvil Chorus. Why should a creature
of such gifts be named for his bodily dimensions, or the shape of his
tail? Why not _Quiscalus gilmorius_, Gilmore's grackle?

That the sounds _were_ wing-made I had no thought of questioning. I had
seen the thing done,--seen it and heard it; and what shall a man trust,
if not his own eyes and ears, especially when each confirms the other?
Two days afterward, nevertheless, I began to doubt. I heard a grackle
"sing" in the manner just described, wing-beats and all, while flying
from one tree to another; and later still, in a country where
boat-tailed grackles were an every-day sight near the heart of the
village, I more than once saw them produce the sounds in question
without any perceptible movement of the wings, and furthermore, their
mandibles could be seen moving in time with the beats. So hard is it to
be sure of a thing, even when you see it and hear it.

"Oh yes," some sharp-witted reader will say, "you saw the wings
flapping,--beating time,--and so you imagined that the sounds were like
wing-beats." But for once the sharp-witted reader is in the wrong. The
resemblance is not imaginary. Mr. F.M. Chapman, in A List of Birds
Observed at Gainesville, Florida,[1] says of the boat-tailed grackle
(_Quiscalus major_): "A singular note of this species greatly resembles
the flapping of wings, as of a coot tripping over the water; this sound
was very familiar to me, but so excellent is the imitation that for a
long time I attributed it to one of the numerous coots which abound in
most places favored by _Q. major_."

[Footnote 1: _The Auk_, vol. v. p. 273.]

If the sounds are not produced by the wings, the question returns, of
course, why the wings are shaken just at the right instant. To that I
must respond with the time-honored formula, "Not prepared." The reader
may believe, if he will, that the bird is aware of the imitative quality
of the notes, and amuses it