ard the songs of their
kind, sing at the proper age, but not always the songs of their
parents. Mr. Scott of Princeton proved this with his orioles. They
sang at the proper age, but not the regular oriole song. I am told
that there is a well-authenticated case of an English sparrow brought
up with canaries that learned to sing like a canary. "The Hon. Daines
Barrington placed three young linnets with three different
foster-parents, the skylark, the woodlark, and the titlark or
meadow-pipit, and each adopted, through imitation, the song of its
foster-parent." I have myself heard goldfinches that were reared in a
cage sing beautifully, but not the regular goldfinch song; it was
clearly the song of a finch, but of what finch I could not have told.
I have also heard a robin that sang to perfection the song of the
brown thrasher; it had, no doubt, caught it by imitation. I have heard
another robin that had the call of the quail interpolated into its own
proper robin's song. But I have yet to hear of a robin building a nest
like a brown thrasher, or of an oriole building a nest like a robin,
or of kingfishers drilling for grubs in a tree. The hen cannot keep
out of the water the ducks she has hatched, nor can the duck coax into
the water the chickens she has hatched. The cowbird hatched and
reared by the sparrow, or the warbler, or the vireo does not sing the
song of the foster-parent. Why? Did its parent not try to teach it? I
have no evidence that young birds sing, except occasionally in a low,
tentative kind of way, till they return the following season, and then
birds of a feather flock together, robins staying with robins, and
cowbirds with cowbirds, each singing the song of its species. The
songs of bobolinks differ in different localities, but those of the
same locality always sing alike. I once had a caged skylark that
imitated the songs of nearly every bird in my neighborhood.

Mr. Leander S. Keyser, author of "Birds of the Rockies," relates in
"Forest and Stream" the results of his experiments with a variety of
birds taken from the nest while very young and reared in captivity;
among them meadowlarks, red-winged blackbirds, brown thrashers, blue
jays, wood thrushes, catbirds, flickers, woodpeckers, and several
others. Did they receive any parental instruction? Not a bit of it,
and yet at the proper age they flew, perched, called, and sang like
their wild fellows--all except the robins and the red-winged
blackbirds: