hundred times a day and
has been doing so for many weeks. The house wren during the
breeding-season repeats his song thousands of times a day, while the
red-eyed vireo sings continuously from morning till night for several
months. How a conscious effort like that would weary our human singers
and their hearers! But the birds are quite unconscious, in our sense, of
what they are doing.

When we pause to think of it, what a spectacle this singing sparrow
presents! A little wild bird sitting on a dead branch and lifting up its
voice in song hour after hour, day after day, week after week.

In terms of science we say it is a secondary sexual characteristic, but
viewed in the light of the spirit of the whole, what is it except a song
of praise and thanksgiving--joy in life, joy in the day, joy in the mate
and brood, joy in the paternal and maternal instincts and solicitudes, a
voice from the heart of nature that the world is good, thanksgiving for
the universal beneficence without which you and I and the little bird
would not be here? In foul weather as in fair, the bird sings. The rain
and the cold do not silence him.

There are few or no pessimists among the birds. One might think the call
of the turtle-dove, which sounds to us like "woe, woe, woe," a wail of
despair; but it is not. It really means "love, love, love." The plaint
of the wood pewee, pensive and like a human sigh, is far from
pessimistic, although in a minor key. The cuckoo comes the nearest to
being a pessimist, with his doleful call, and the catbird and the jay,
with their peevish and complaining notes, might well be placed in that
category, were it not for their songs when the love passion makes
optimists even of them. The strain of the hermit thrush which floats
down to me from the wooded heights above day after day at all hours, but
more as the shades of night are falling--what does this pure, serene,
exalted strain mean but that, in Browning's familiar words,

God's in his heaven--
All's right with the world!

The bird may sing for his mate and his brood alone, but what puts it
into his heart to do that? Certainly it is good to have a mate and a
brood!

A new season brings new experiences with the same old familiar birds, or
new thoughts about them. This season I have had new impressions of our
cuckoos, which are oftener heard than seen. Of the two species, the
black-billed and the yellow-billed, the former prevails in the latitude
of New E