Page:Bird-lore Vol 01.djvu/338

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no Bird- Lore and kick which scattered behind him all the leaves on which his feet had for an instant rested. In this way he would quickly clear a considerable space, to which he would then devote his attention until he had picked up all the uncovered seeds and rolled them, one by one, between his slightly opened mandibles to remove the husks, after the manner of. most seed-eating birds. He was invari- ably silent when feeding, but within the recesses of his favorite thicket he sang more or less freely at all hours, oftenest in the early morning or when the sun had just emerged from behind a cloud, usually from some perch a yard or less above the ground, LINCOLN S SPARROW About ]-2 natural size. From a mounted specimen in the American Museum of Natural History but not infrequently on the ground itself as he rambled from place to place, hopping slowly over the dry leaves. His voice was divinely rich and sweet at times, but invariably so low as to be inaudible at a greater distance than forty or fifty yards. It is impossible to treat briefly and at the same time accurately of his song, for it included several themes, some of which differed comparatively slightly from one another, while others were widely dissimilar. After spending much time studying and comparing them, I noted and classified them as follows: I. A simple, level, woodeny trill repeated at short, regular inter- vals, usually indistinguishable from the summer song of the Junco but sometimes possessing a resonant, lyrical quality approaching that of the Yellow-rumped Warbler's song.