Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/558

542 curruca) attracted my attention; I noticed particularly the increased care that was taken by the parent birds, as feeding-time approached, against unwelcome discovery. It was manifested, first, in a cessation of singing, and then in the combined efforts of the pair to divert strange looks from the nest. The birds, when about to take food to their young, were accustomed to fly down from opposite sides, and while one, after many cross-flights through the overhanging foliage, slipped into the nest, the other would flutter wildly hither and thither in another part of the tree. The three half-fledged young birds, when able to glide through the bushes, but not yet to fly, were dislodged from the nest, and while two of them disappeared with the mother, I caught the third, against the anxious remonstrances of the male, and hung it up in a cage in my veranda. The old male stood faithful to his chick, evidently concentrating his whole attention upon it, hopping around among the trees and collecting insects for it from early in the morning till the coming on of night, unceasingly, and never out of the neighborhood. He was accustomed to sound a grating zapp, zapp, in which the young one soon learned to join, in a variety of tones constituting a whole gamut of modulated sounds, from the note of cheerful pleasure to those of anxiety and anger, and was moved to utterance by the most insignificant event in the cage or around it.

I observed that the male bird, which had sung much less than usual while the female was sitting, and had ceased to sing entirely as soon as the young ones were hatched out, resumed his old habit of song as soon as the fledgeling's domicile was changed from the nest to the cage. He would execute a kind of strophe of from seven to nine clear, ringing notes, having sometimes a joyous and sometimes a melancholy expression. What was the meaning of the song which he thus resumed? Was it poured out to dispel the sorrow of the lonely orphaned young one? Did the absence of the female give the male a greater liberty in the matter? Or, was it sung in hopes of bringing the female back, or in rivalry with another male? Pondering over such questions as these led me to reflections and observations on the origin and meaning of the songs of birds.

While we may regard the ordinary vocal utterances of birds as expressions of their moods and wants, signals of intelligence, notes of warning, or calls for help, their song proper must be supposed to describe their more deep-felt emotions and anxieties, and to be related to their common expressions of sound as art is related to the handicrafts that minister to the necessities of life. Like art, the birdsong also, repeatedly exercised, may become an habitual mode of expression.

The majority of ornithologists agree in ascribing an erotic character to the songs of birds; not only the melting melodies, but also those of their tones that are discordant to the human car, are regarded as love-notes. Darwin finally, saving some reserves, came to accept