ed on the wing. From its habit of singing at twilight, and from
the swift, darting motions of the bird, I am inclined to think that in
it we have solved the mystery of Thoreau's "night-warbler," that
puzzled and eluded him for years. Emerson told him he must beware of
finding and booking it, lest life should have nothing more to show
him. The older ornithologists must have heard this song many times,
but they never seem to have suspected the identity of the singer.

Other birds that sing on the wing are the meadowlark, goldfinch,
purple finch, indigo-bird, Maryland yellow-throat, and woodcock. The
flight-song of the woodcock I have heard but twice in my life. The
first time was in the evening twilight about the middle of April. The
bird was calling in the dusk "yeap, yeap," or "seap, seap," from the
ground,--a peculiar reedy call. Then, by and by, it started upward on
an easy slant, that peculiar whistling of its wings alone heard; then,
at an altitude of one hundred feet or more, it began to float about in
wide circles and broke out in an ecstatic chipper, almost a warble at
times, with a peculiar smacking musical quality; then, in a minute or
so, it dropped back to the ground again, not straight down like the
lark, but more spirally, and continued its call as before. In less
than five minutes it was up again. The next time, a few years later,
I heard the song in company with a friend, Dr. Clara Barrus. Let me
give the woman's impression of the song as she afterward wrote it up
for a popular journal.

"The sunset light was flooding all this May loveliness of field and
farm and distant wood; song sparrows were blithely pouring out
happiness by the throatful; peepers were piping and toads trilling,
and we thought it no hardship to wait in such a place till the dusk
should gather, and the wary woodcock announce his presence. But hark!
while yet 'tis light, only a few rods distant, I hear that welcome
'seap ... seap,' and lo! a chipper and a chirr, and past us he
flies,--a direct, slanting upward flight, somewhat labored,--his bill
showing long against the reddened sky. 'He has something in his
mouth,' I start to say, when I bethink me what a long bill he has.
Around, above us he flies in wide, ambitious circles, the while we are
enveloped, as it were, in that hurried chippering sound--fine,
elusive, now near, now distant. How rapid is the flight! Now it sounds
faster and faster, 'like a whiplash flashed through the air,'