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At a first hearing the song seems not so long sustained as the purple finch's commonly is, but exceedingly like it in voice and manner, though not equal to it, I should be inclined to say, in either respect. The birds made frequent use of a monosyllabic call, corresponding to the calls of the purple finch and the rose-breasted grosbeak, but readily distinguishable from both.
But we linger unduly with these lesser lights of song. After the music of the Alice and the Swainson thrushes, the chief distinction of May, 1884, as far as my Melrose woods were concerned, was the entirely unexpected advent of a colony of rose-breasted grosbeaks.
Two or three rose-breasted grossbeaks piped their liquid, childlike arias; towhees, at least a half-dozen of them, flung forth their loud, explosive trills that have a real musical quality; several cardinals whistled as if they meant to drown out all the other voices; scarlet and summer tanagers drawled their good-natured tunes, while their rich robes gleamed in the level rays of the rising sun; running like silver threads through all the other music, could be heard the fine trills of the field sparrows; the swinging chant of the creeping warblers and the loud rattle of the Tennessee warblers ran high up in the scale, furnishing a gossamer tenor; that golden optimist, the Baltimore oriole, piped his cheery recitative in the tops of the trees; chickadees supplied the minor strains and tufted titmice the alto; four or five turtle doves soothed the ear with their meditative cooing; while the calls and songs of numerous jays and a few yellow-breasted chats made a kind of trombone accompaniment.
A backward season brings strangers into close company for a while. A white-throat sings his clear song of the North, and a moment later is answered by an oriole's melody, or the sweet tones of a rose-breasted grosbeak the latter one of those rarely favoured birds, exquisite in both plumage and song.
One of the most winning inhabitants of my bird-room last winter bore on his snow-white breast a pointed shield of beautiful rose-color, and the same rich hue lined his wings. With these exceptions his dress was of sober black and white, though so attractively disposed that he was an extremely pretty bird the rose-breasted grosbeak.
In my note-book I find an entry describing my vain attempts to enjoy the music of a rose-breasted grosbeak, who at that time had never been a common bird with me, while "a pesky Wagnerian red-eye kept up an incessant racket." The warbling vireo is admirably named; there is no one of our birds that can more properly be said to warble.
All about us lies a beautiful world of woodland. The whistle of quails innumerable broke upon us in the twilight, succeeding to the calls of rose-breasted grosbeaks and a goodly company of daylight followers; in this darkening hour, the low, plaintive note of the whip-poor-will is heard on every hand, now and then interrupted by the hoarse bark of owls.
Bread stuffs, he would have to admit, were scarce in that cornless land: but hard exercise and fresh air sharpen the appetite and strengthen the digestion; and a keen woodsman will not heed bannocks when he can get beef, varied by such an exotic viand as kangaroo venison, and by such delicate and fantastical volatiles as harlequin pigeons and rose-breasted cockatoos.
The bush-tit feeds largely on insects that destroy grape-vines and on the black olive scale. Other species eat most of the scales which infest fruit and forest trees. The rose-breasted grosbeak, while it eats a few green peas, is to be classed among the wholly beneficial birds, for it is the great natural destroyer of the Colorado potato beetle.
It is all masculine love music, as much an expression of their tender feelings towards listening maidens, as the old troubadour songs to fair ladies or as the exquisite song of the rose-breasted grosbeak is to his brown-garbed spouse in May and June.
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