Page:Bird-lore Vol 04.djvu/73

 52 Bird - Lore

end. Shorter and more frequent utterances are a low Hot-Hot or Hat- .l'IM-l’lar and a single explosive Imp very like the ejaculation of a startled frog. Nearly all these cries are loud and discordant and most of them are curiously hen-like.

Quite as retiring by nature as the Rails and Gallinules and even less conspicuous, by reason of its habitual silence, the Least Bittern, most diminutive of our Herons, passes almost unnoticed save by the ornithologists, although it is a not uncommon summer resident of, the Fresh Pond marshes, arriving about the middle of May and departing late in August. It is one of the most feebler listless and timid-seeming of all birds and its habits are in perfect keeping with its appearance, for, excepting when flushed from the beds of cat-tail ﬂags where it apparently spends its en- tire time, and where its frail nest is suspended a foot or more above the water, it is seldom seen on wing even at nightfall when so many other faintvhearted creatures move about with more or less freedom and conﬁdenCe. Nor do we often hear its voice save during a brief period at the height of the breeding season when the male, concealed among the rank vegetation of his secure retreats, utters a succession of low, cooing sounds varying somewhat in number as well as in form with different birds or even with the same individual at different times The commoner variations are as follows: ciia, barber/1512 (the first and last syllables slightly and about evenly accented), ran—[00, [urban-lab (with distinct emphasis on the last syllable only). ca-ca-ra-m, ca-ca—bn—ba or za-bo-ba (all without special emphasis on any particular syllable).

These notes are uttered chieﬂy in the early morning and late after- noon, usually at rather infrequent intervals but sometimes every four or ﬁve seconds for many minutes at a time. When heard at a distance they have a soft, cuckoo-like quality; nearer the bird's voice sounds harder and more like that of the domestic Pigeon, while very close at hand it is almost disagreeably hoarse and raucous as well as hollow and some- what vibrant in tone. Besides this cooing the Least Bittern occasionally emits, when startled, a loud, cackling m-m-m—m.

The leopard frogs may be heard occasionally, and the hylas not infrequently, early in May, and the bull'frog very commonly towards its close, but the batrachian voices most characteristic of this month are the harsh squawk of the garden toad, already described, and the love notes of the tree toad. During the brief period—scarce exceeding a week— which the male of the species last-named spends with the female in the water (where the eggs are laid) before returning to his favorite hollow branch in some old orchard or forest tree, he and his comrades of the same sex fill the marshes in the late afternoon and through the night with the sound of their joyous contralto voices. The rather pleasing, rolling notes which they utter at this time are not essentially different