he song season is common to
many of our birds. I have seen even the song sparrow indulge in it,
rising fifty feet or more and delivering its simple song with obvious
excitement. The idiotic-looking woodcock, inspired by the grand passion,
rises upon whistling wings in the early spring twilight, and floats and
circles at an altitude of a hundred feet or more, and in rapid
smackering and chippering notes unburdens his soul. The song of ecstasy
with our meadowlark is delivered in a level flight and is sharp and
hurried, both flight and song differing radically from its everyday
performance. One thinks of the bobolink as singing almost habitually on
the wing. He is the most rollicking and song-drunk of all our singing
birds. His season is brief but hilarious. In his level flight he seems
to use only the tips of his wings, and we see them always below the
level of his back. Our common birds that have no flight-song, so far as
I have observed, are the bluebird, the robin, the phoebe, the social
sparrow, the tanager, the grosbeak, the pewee, the wood warblers, and
most of the ground warblers.

Over thirty years ago a writer on flying-machines had this to say about
the flight of sea-gulls: "Sweeping around in circles, occasionally
elevating themselves by a few flaps of the wings, they glide down and up
the aerial inclines without apparently any effort whatever. But a close
observation will show that at every turn the angle of inclination of the
wings is changed to meet the new conditions. There is continual movement
with power--by the bird it is done instinctively, by our machine only
through mechanism obeying a mind not nearly so well instructed."

The albatross will follow a ship at sea, sailing round and round, in a
brisk breeze, on unbending wing, only now and then righting itself with
a single flap of its great pinions. It literally rides upon the storm.

IV

BIRD INTIMACIES

When, as sometimes happens, I feel an inclination to seek out new lands
in my own country, or in other countries, to see what Nature is doing
there, and what guise she wears, something prompts me to pause, and
after a while to say to myself: "Look a little closer into the nature
right at your own door; do a little intensive observation at home, and
see what that yields you. The enticement of the far-away is mostly in
your imagination; let your eyes and your imagination play once more on
the old familiar birds and objects."

One season i