said my
friend; up, up he soars, till he becomes lost to sight at the instant
that his song ends in that last mad ecstasy that just precedes his
alighting."

The meadowlark sings in a level flight, half hovering in the air,
giving voice to a rapid medley of lark-like notes. The goldfinch also
sings in a level flight, beating the air slowly with its wings broadly
open, and pouring out its jubilant, ecstatic strain I think it
indulges in this wing-song only in the early season. After the mother
bird has begun sitting, the male circles about within earshot of her,
in that curious undulating flight, uttering his "per-chic-o-pee,
per-chic-o-pee," while the female calls back to him in the tenderest
tones, "Yes, lovie; I hear you." The indigo-bird and the purple finch,
when their happiness becomes too full and buoyant for them longer to
control it, launch into the air, and sing briefly, ecstatically, in a
tremulous, hovering flight. The air-song of these birds does not
differ essentially from the song delivered from the perch, except that
it betrays more excitement, and hence is a more complete lyrical
rapture.

The purple finch is our finest songster among the finches. Its strain
is so soft and melodious, and touched with such a childlike gayety and
plaintiveness, that I think it might sound well even in a cage inside
a room, if the bird would only sing with the same joyous abandonment,
which, of course, it would not do.

It is not generally known that individual birds of the same species
show different degrees of musical ability. This is often noticed in
caged birds, among which the principle of variation seems more active;
but an attentive observer notes the same fact in wild birds.
Occasionally he hears one that in powers of song surpasses all its
fellows. I have heard a sparrow, an oriole, and a wood thrush, each
of which had a song of its own that far exceeded any other. I stood
one day by a trout-stream, and suspended my fishing for several
minutes to watch a song sparrow that was singing on a dry limb before
me. He had five distinct songs, each as markedly different from the
others as any human songs, which he repeated one after the other. He
may have had a sixth or a seventh, but he bethought himself of some
business in the next field, and flew away before he had exhausted his
repertory. I once had a letter from Robert Louis Stevenson, who said
he had read an account I had written of the song of the English
blac