And
so it was,--the first one I had heard in Florida, although I had seen
many. Probably the two birds have peculiarities of voice and method
that, with longer familiarity on the listener's part, would render them
easily distinguishable. On general principles, I must believe that to be
true of all birds. But the experience just described is not to be taken
as proving that _I_ have any such familiarity. Within a week afterward,
while walking along the railway, I came upon a thrasher and a
mocking-bird singing side by side; the mocker upon a telegraph pole, and
the thrasher on the wire, halfway between the mocker and the next pole.
They sang and sang, while I stood between them in the cut below and
listened; and if my life had depended on my seeing how one song differed
from the other, I could not have done it. With my eyes shut, the birds
might have changed places,--if they could have done it quickly
enough,--and I should have been none the wiser.
As I have said, I followed the road over the nearly level plateau for
what I guessed to be about three miles. Then I found myself in a bit of
hollow that seemed made for a stopping-place, with a plantation road
running off to the right, and a hillside cornfield of many acres on the
left. In the field were a few tall dead trees. At the tip of one sat a
sparrow-hawk, and to the trunk of another clung a red-bellied
woodpecker, who, with characteristic foolishness, sat beside his hole
calling persistently, and then, as if determined to publish what other
birds so carefully conceal, went inside, thrust out his head, and
resumed his clatter.
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