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Updated: May 13, 2025
Now he says "towhee'!" the next time "chewink'!" You may change about at will, and the notes will always correspond. Whatever is in our mind at the instant, that will seem to be what the bird says. This should warn us of the danger of reading our thoughts and theories too much into the minds and actions of birds. Their mental processes, in many ways, correspond to ours.
When the stream runs out into the old clearing, or down through the pasture, you find other and livelier birds, the robins, with his sharp, saucy call and breathless, merry warble; the bluebird, with his notes of pure gladness, and the oriole, with his wild, flexible whistle; the chewink, bustling about in the thicket, talking to his sweetheart in French, "cherie, cherie!" and the song-sparrow, perched on his favourite limb of a young maple, dose beside the water, and singing happily, through sunshine and through rain.
In seven or eight days, as soon, in fact, as they could stand, the nestlings deserted the little home and I saw them no more, but I learned one fact new to me about the singing of the chewink. After the nest was abandoned I sat down in the usual place, hoping to hear the silver tremolo I am so fond of. In a moment my bird began.
Peter knew that there was only one person with a coat of that color. It was Reddy Fox, and quite plainly Reddy was hoping to catch Chewink. For a second or two Peter was quite undecided what to do. He couldn't warn Chewink without making his own presence known to Reddy Fox.
There is an expression of great cheerfulness in these notes; but music, like poetry, must be somewhat plaintive in its character, to take strong hold of the feelings. I have never known a person to be affected by these notes as by those of the Wood-Sparrow. While engaged in singing, the Chewink is usually perched on the lower branch of a tree, near the edge of a wood, or on the top of a tall bush.
Before them lay their open fields, sloping down to the bottom, the cabins on one side, and the kingfisher embankment on the other. There was a smoky haze in the air. As always the blackbirds clamored along the river. Some crows followed the workers at a distance, hunting for grains of corn, and over in the woods, a chewink scratched and rustled among the deep leaves as it searched for grubs.
A chewink, brave in his black and white and tan uniform, scratched mightily with great two-footed swoops that threw the vegetable mould over Orde's very feet. Blazoned butterflies the yellow and black turnus, the dark troilus, the shade-loving nymphalis flickered in and out of the patches of sunlight. Orde paid them no attention. The noon heat poured down through the forest isles like an incense.
In neighborly association with the brown thrush is the towhee bunting, or chewink. The two choose the same places for their summer homes, and, unless I am deceived, they often migrate in company. But though they are so much together, and in certain of their ways very much alike, their habits of mind are widely dissimilar. The towhee is of a peculiarly even disposition.
Familiar as the chewink might be about our quarters, his own home was well hidden, on the rising ground leading up to the mesa, "An unkempt zone, Where vines and weeds and scrub oaks intertwine," which no one bigger than a bird could penetrate.
It was quite clear that Chewink was hungry and that under those dry leaves he was finding a good meal. His feet were made for scratching and he certainly knew how to use them. For some time Peter sat there watching.
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