one. On the 15th
I witnessed a certain other performance of theirs,--one that I had seen
two or three times the season previous, and for which I had been on the
lookout from the first day of the month. I heard a series of _chips_,
which might have been the cries of a chicken, but which, it appeared,
did proceed from a phoebe, who, as I looked up, was just in the act of
quitting his perch on the ridge-pole of a barn. He rose for perhaps
thirty feet, not spirally, but in a zigzag course,--like a horse
climbing a hill with a heavy load,--all the time calling, _chip, chip,
chip_. Then he went round and round in a small circle, with a kind of
hovering action of the wings, vociferating hurriedly, _Phoebe,
Phoebe, Phoebe_; after which he shot down into the top of a tree,
and with a lively flirt of his tail took up again the same eloquent
theme. During the next few weeks I several times found birds of this
species similarly engaged. And it is worthy of remark that, of the four
flycatchers which regularly pass the summer with us, three may be said
to be, in the _habit_ of singing in the air, while the fourth (the wood
pewee) does the same thing, only with less frequency. It is curious,
also, on the other hand, that not one of our eight common New England
thrushes, as far as I have ever seen or heard, shows the least tendency
toward any such state of lyrical exaltation. Yet the thrushes are song
birds _par excellence_, while the phoebe, the least flycatcher, and
the kingbird are not supposed to be able to sing at all. The latter have
the soul of music in them, at any rate; and why should it not be true of
birds, as it is of human poets and would-be poets, that sensibility and
faculty are not always found together? Perhaps those who have nothing
but the sensibility have, after all, the better half of the blessing.

The golden-winged woodpeckers shouted comparatively little before the
middle of the month, and I heard nothing of their tender _wick-a-wick_
until the 22d. After that they were noisy enough. With all their power
of lungs, however, they not only are not singers; they do not aspire to
be. They belong to the tribe of Jubal. Hearing somebody drumming on tin,
I peeped over the wall, and saw one of these pigeon woodpeckers
hammering an old tin pan lying in the middle of the pasture. Rather
small sport, I thought, for so large a bird. But that was a matter of
opinion, merely, and evidently the performer himself had no such
scr