rains that seem new to me. Nearly all of
his music is sweet and tender, lapsing from his round breast like water
over the smooth lip of a pool, then breaking farther on into a sparkling
foam of melodious notes, which, glow with subdued enthusiasm, yet
without expressing much of the strong, gushing ecstasy of the bobolink
or skylark.

The more striking strains are perfect arabesques of melody, composed of
a few full, round, mellow notes, embroidered with delicate trills which
fade and melt in long slender cadences. In a general way his music is
that of the streams refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes of
the falls are in it, the trills of rapids, the gurgling of margin
eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of
separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses and falling into tranquil
pools.

The Ouzel never sings in chorus with other birds, nor with his kind, but
only with the streams. And like flowers that bloom beneath the surface
of the ground, some of our favorite's best song-blossoms never rise
above the surface of the heavier music of the water. I have often
observed him singing in the midst of beaten spray, his music completely
buried beneath the water's roar; yet I knew he was surely singing by his
gestures and the movements of his bill.

His food, as far as I have noticed, consists of all kinds of water
insects, which in summer are chiefly procured along shallow margins.
Here he wades about ducking his head under water and deftly turning over
pebbles and fallen leaves with his bill, seldom choosing to go into deep
water where he has to use his wings in diving.

He seems to be especially fond of the larvae; of mosquitos, found in
abundance attached to the bottom of smooth rock channels where the
current is shallow. When feeding in such places he wades up-stream, and
often while his head is under water the swift current is deflected
upward along the glossy curves of his neck and shoulders, in the form of
a clear, crystalline shell, which fairly incloses him like a bell-glass,
the shell being broken and re-formed as he lifts and dips his head;
while ever and anon he sidles out to where the too powerful current
carries him off his feet; then he dexterously rises on the wing and goes
gleaning again in shallower places.

But during the winter, when the stream-banks are embossed in snow, and
the streams themselves are chilled nearly to the freezing-point, so that
the snow falli