ain, he says
the song of the blue grosbeak resembles the bobolink's, which it does
about as much as the two birds resemble each other in color; one is
black and white and the other is blue. The song of the wood-wagtail,
he says, consists of a "short succession of simple notes beginning
with emphasis and gradually falling." The truth is, they run up the
scale instead of down, beginning low and ending in a shriek.

Yet considering the extent of Audubon's work, the wonder is the errors
are so few. I can at this moment recall but one observation of his,
the contrary of which I have proved to be true. In his account of the
bobolink he makes a point of the fact that, in returning south in the
fall, they do not travel by night as they do when moving north in the
spring. In Washington I have heard their calls as they flew over at
night for four successive autumns. As he devoted the whole of a long
life to the subject, and figured and described over four hundred
species, one feels a real triumph on finding in our common woods a
bird not described in his work. I have seen but two. Walking in the
woods one day in early fall, in the vicinity of West Point, I started
up a thrush that was sitting on the ground. It alighted on a branch a
few yards off, and looked new to me. I thought I had never before seen
so long-legged a thrush. I shot it, and saw that it was a new
acquaintance. Its peculiarities were its broad, square tail; the
length of its legs, which were three and three quarters inches from
the end of the middle toe to the hip-joint; and the deep uniform
olive-brown of the upper parts, and the gray of the lower. It proved
to be the gray-cheeked thrush, named and first described by Professor
Baird. But little seems to be known concerning it, except that it
breeds in the far north, even on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. I
would go a good way to hear its song.

The present season I met with a pair of them near Washington, as
mentioned above. In size this bird approaches the wood thrush, being
larger than either the hermit or the veery; unlike all other species,
no part of its plumage has a tawny or yellowish tinge. The other
specimen was the northern or small water-thrush, cousin-german to the
oven-bird and the half-brother to the Louisiana water-thrush or
wagtail. I found it at the head of the Delaware, where it evidently
had a nest. It usually breeds much further north. It has a strong,
clear warble, which at once suggests t