pon the
track to earth their wings, or else to pick up the grain that leaks
out of the wheat-trains, and sows the track from Dakota to the
seaboard. Probably the wind which they might have to face in getting
up was the prime cause of their being struck. One does not think of
the locomotive as a bird-destroyer, though it is well known that many
of the smaller mammals often fall beneath it.

A very interesting feature of our bird-songs is the wing-song, or song
of ecstasy. It is not the gift of many of our birds. Indeed, less than
a dozen species are known to me as ever singing on the wing. It seems
to spring from more intense excitement and self-abandonment than the
ordinary song delivered from the perch. When its joy reaches the point
of rapture, the bird is literally carried off its feet, and up it goes
into the air, pouring out its song as a rocket pours out its sparks.
The skylark and the bobolink habitually do this, while a few others of
our birds do it only on occasions. One summer, up in the Catskills, I
added another name to my list of ecstatic singers--that of the vesper
sparrow. Several times I heard a new song in the air, and caught a
glimpse of the bird as it dropped back to the earth. My attention
would be attracted by a succession of hurried, chirping notes,
followed by a brief burst of song, then by the vanishing form of the
bird. One day I was lucky enough to see the bird as it was rising to
its climax in the air, and to identify it as the vesper sparrow. The
burst of song that crowned the upward flight of seventy-five or one
hundred feet was brief; but it was brilliant and striking, and
entirely unlike the leisurely chant of the bird while upon the ground.
It suggested a lark, but was less buzzing or humming. The preliminary
chirping notes, uttered faster and faster as the bird mounted in the
air, were like the trail of sparks which a rocket emits before its
grand burst of color at the top of its flight.

It is interesting to note that this bird is quite lark-like in its
color and markings, having the two lateral white quills in the tail,
and it has the habit of elevating the feathers on the top of the head
so as to suggest a crest. The solitary skylark that I discovered
several years ago in a field near me was seen on several occasions
paying his addresses to one of these birds, but the vesper-bird was
shy, and eluded all his advances.

Probably the perch-songster among our ordinary birds that is mos