Sometimes
they sing in the trees immediately around the house, and if the air is
still we can always hear them from among the tall trees at the foot of
the hill. The thrashers sing in the hedgerows beyond the garden, the
catbirds everywhere. The catbirds have such an attractive song that it
is extremely irritating to know that at any moment they may interrupt
it to mew and squeal. The bold, cheery music of the robins always seems
typical of the bold, cheery birds themselves. The Baltimore orioles nest
in the young elms around the house, and the orchard orioles in the apple
trees near the garden and outbuildings. Among the earliest sounds of
spring is the cheerful, simple, homely song of the song-sparrow; and in
March we also hear the piercing cadence of the meadow-lark--to us one
of the most attractive of all bird calls. Of late years now and then
we hear the rollicking, bubbling melody of the bobolink in the pastures
back of the barn; and when the full chorus of these and of many other
of the singers of spring is dying down, there are some true hot-weather
songsters, such as the brightly hued indigo buntings and thistlefinches.
Among the finches one of the most musical and plaintive songs is that of
the bush-sparrow--I do not know why the books call it field-sparrow,
for it does not dwell in the open fields like the vesperfinch, the
savannah-sparrow, and grasshopper-sparrow, but among the cedars and
bayberry bushes and young locusts in the same places where the prairie
warbler is found.
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