Once, for two or three
days, the trees were amazingly full of blue yellow-backed warblers.
Numbers of them, a dozen at least, could be heard singing at once
directly over one's head, running up the scale not one after another,
but literally in unison. Here the tufted titmouse, the very soul of
monotony, piped and piped and piped, as if his diapason stop were pulled
out and stuck, and could not be pushed in again. He is an odd genius.
With plenty of notes, he wearies you almost to distraction, harping on
one string for half an hour together. He is the one Southern bird that I
should perhaps be sorry to see common in Massachusetts; but that
"perhaps" is a large word. Many yellow-throated warblers, silent as yet,
were commonly in the live-oaks, and innumerable myrtle birds, also
silent, with prairie warblers, black-and-white creepers, solitary
vireos, an occasional chickadee, and many more. It was a birdy spot; and
just across the way, on the shrubby island, were red-winged blackbirds,
who piqued my curiosity by adding to the familiar _conkaree_ a final
syllable,--the Florida termination, I called it,--which made me wonder
whether, as has been the case with so many other Florida birds, they
might not turn out to be a distinct race, worthy of a name (_Agelaius
phoeniceus something-or-other_), as well as of a local habitation. I
suggest the question to those whose business it is to be learned in such
matters.
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