Page:Summerstudiesofb00fowlrich.djvu/29

i nature; yet the bird is very much in earnest, for much of the coming season's happiness may depend on the results of this persistent practice.

Why the Chaffinch should stand almost alone among birds in the trouble he has with his song, is more than I can explain; I know at present but one other whose song is not almost perfect from the first day of singing. If I am to make a guess, it would be that this bird's song is curiously stereotyped to a particular form, which needs an effort each time it is gone through, and that to get it perfect a fair amount of warmth and bodily vigour is necessary; while others, whose musical range is more elastic, can accommodate their voices to their bodily condition without producing ludicrous results. And I may call the Yellow-hammer as a witness to my theory; for he, whose song is also stereotyped in one mould — that which is familiar to us all as "a little bit of bread and no cheese," — will rarely bring out his "cheese" in his first spring effort, and is at all times liable to drop it, if he be in a lazy or melancholy mood.

Other birds are singing — Thrushes, Robins, Dunnocks, Wrens, Greenfinches; whose voices, already perfect in execution, need no comment in this chapter. Let us notice what else is getting ready, in these fields that slope down to the brook. The Starlings seem to be in a state of transition, as