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Washington, and, as far as I have seen, upon the White Mountains
generally. The feeble, sharp song of the black-poll is a singular
affair; short and slight as it is, it embraces a perfect crescendo and a
perfect decrescendo. Without question I passed plenty of white-throated
sparrows, but by some coincidence not one of them announced himself. The
gray-cheeked thrushes, which sang freely, were not heard till I was
perhaps halfway between the Eagle Cliff Notch and the Eagle Lakes. This
species, so recently added to our summer fauna, proves to be not
uncommon in the mountainous parts of New England, though apparently
confined to the spruce forests at or near the summits. I found it
abundant on Mount Mansfield, Vermont, in 1885, and in the summer of 1888
Mr. Walter Faxon surprised us all by shooting a specimen on Mount
Graylock, Massachusetts. Doubtless the bird has been singing its
perfectly distinctive song in the White Mountain woods ever since the
white man first visited them. During the vernal migration, indeed, I
have more than once heard it sing in eastern Massachusetts. My latest
delightful experience of this kind was on the 29th of May last (1889),
while I was hastening to a railway train within the limits of Boston.
Preoccupied as I was, and faintly as the notes came to me, I recognized
them instantly; for while the gray-cheek's song bears an evident
resemblance to the veery's (which I had heard within five minutes), the
two are so unlike in pitch and rhythm that no reasonably nice ear ought
ever to confound them. The bird was just over the high, close,
inhospitable fence, on the top of which I rested my chin and watched and
listened. He sat with his back toward me, in full view, on a level with
my eye, and sang and sang and sang, in a most deliciously soft, far-away
voice, keeping his wings all the while a little raised and quivering, as
in a kind of musical ecstasy. It does seem a thing to be regretted--yes,
a thing to be ashamed of--that a bird so beautiful, so musical, so
romantic in its choice of a dwelling-place, and withal so characteristic
of New England should be known, at a liberal estimate, to not more than
one or two hundred New Englanders! But if a bird wishes general
recognition, he should do as the robin does, and the bluebird, and the
oriole,--dress like none of his neighbors, and show himself freely in
the vicinity of men's houses. How can one expect to be famous unless he
takes a little pains t