Just at the lowest point in the valley I stopped to
listen to a song which I did not recognize, but which, by and by, I
settled upon as probably the work of a freakish prairie warbler. At that
moment, as if to confirm my conjecture,--which in the retrospect becomes
almost ridiculous,--a prairie warbler hopped into sight on an outer twig
of the water-oak out of which the music had proceeded. Still something
said, "Are you sure?" and I stepped inside the fence. There on the
ground were two or three white-crowned sparrows, and in an instant the
truth of the case flashed upon me. I remembered the saying of a friend,
that the song of the white-crown had reminded him of the vesper sparrow
and the black-throated green warbler. That was my bird; and I listened
again, though I could no longer be said to feel in doubt. A long time I
waited. Again and again the birds sang, and at last I discovered one of
them perched at the top of the oak, tossing back his head and warbling
--a white-crowned sparrow: the one regular Massachusetts migrant which I
had often seen, but had never heard utter a sound.
The strain opens with smooth, sweet notes almost exactly like the
introductory syllables of the vesper sparrow. Then the tone changes, and
the remainder of the song is in something like the pleasingly hoarse
voice of a prairie warbler, or a black-throated green. It is soft and
very pretty; not so perfect a piece of art as the vesper sparrow's
tune,--few bird-songs are,--but taking for its very oddity, and at the
same time tender and sweet.
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