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Above all arose wild rice he had planted for the birds. The red wings swayed on the willows and tilted on every stem that would bear their weight, singing their melodious half-chanted notes, "O-ka-lee!"
Its most familiar call is like the word "BAZIQUE," "BAZIQUE," but it has a wild musical note which Emerson has embalmed in this line: "The redwing flutes his O-KA-LEE." Here Emerson discriminates; there is no mistaking his blackbird this time for the European species, though it is true there is nothing fluty or flute-like in the redwing's voice.
A turtle scrambled from a log and splashed into the water, while a red-wing shouted, "O-ka-lee!" to her. Mrs. Comstock paused and looked intently at the slime-covered quagmire, framed in a flower riot and homed over by sweet-voiced birds.
What music can there be in that long, piercing, far-heard note of the first meadowlark in spring to any but a native, or in the "o-ka-lee" of the red-shouldered starling as he rests upon the willows in March?
The flute is mellow, while the "O-KA-LEE" of the starling is strong and sharply accented. Hence the aptness of this line of Tennyson: "The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm," the blackbird being the ouzel, or ouzel-cock, as Shakespeare calls him. In the line which precedes this, Tennyson has stamped the cuckoo: "To left and right, The cuckoo told his name to all the hills."
I have changed to the red winged blackbird, because that was the first American bird I learned to know by his song, outside of the robin. His voice always sounded so gay and free, singing over the open fields, that he seemed to be a symbol of the freedom and happiness which one finds in America. When he sings 'O-ka-lee! O-ka-lee! O-ka-lee! I always think he is singing 'Liberty! Liberty!
"The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee. "Do you remember that line, colonel?" and the professor softly whistled a strain in imitation of a bird's note. "The services of our little brothers of the air are exceedingly valuable to the horticulturist. And think of the damage done to arboriculture by the woodborers alone were it not for the help given by the birds.
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