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The partridge is undoubtedly acquainted with the same process of reasoning; for, like the vesper-bird, she, too, nests in open, unprotected places, avoiding all show of concealment, coming from the tangled and almost impenetrable parts of the forest to the clean, open woods, where she can command all the approaches and fly with equal ease in any direction.
Add the best parts of the lay of the latter to the sweet vibrating chant of the wood sparrow, and you have the evening hymn of the vesper-bird, the poet of the plain, unadorned pastures. Go to those broad, smooth, uplying fields where the cattle and sheep are grazing, and sit down in the twilight on one of those warm, clean stones, and listen to this song.
The Robin is surpassed by certain birds in some particular qualities. The Mocking-bird has more power, the Red Thrush more variety, the Vesper-bird more execution, and the Bobolink more animation; but each of these birds has more faults than the Robin, and would be less esteemed as a constant companion, a vocalist for all hours, whose strains never tire and never offend.
It may be remarked, that you seldom hear one of these birds singing alone; but when one begins, all others in the vicinity immediately join him. The usual resorts of the Vesper-bird are the pastures and the hay-fields; hence the name of Grass-Finch, by which he is usually distinguished.
In May and June there is no want of sylvan minstrels to wake the morn and to sing the vespers of a sweet summer evening. A flood of song wakes us at the earliest daylight; and the shy and solitary Veery, after the Vesper-Bird has concluded his evening hymn, pours his few pensive notes into the very bosom of twilight, and makes the hour sacred by his melody.
But they do not in fact differ in this respect, as each species occasionally builds in both ways. The Vesper-bird attracts more general attention to his notes than the Sparrow, because he sings a longer, though a more monotonous song, and warbles with more fervency.
The Song-Sparrow, on the contrary, sings about equally from morning to night, and but little more at one hour than another; and the different performers of this species do not seem to join in concert. This habit renders the latter more companionable, at the same time it causes his notes to be less regarded than those of the Vesper-bird, who pours them forth more sparingly, and at regular periods.
The Vesper-bird begins with all his kindred in a general concert at early dawn, after which they are comparatively silent until sunset, when they repeat their concert, with still greater zeal than they chanted in the morning. It is from this circumstance that it has obtained the name it bears from its evening hymn, or vespers.
The solitary skylark that I discovered several years ago in a field near me was seen on several occasions paying his addresses to one of these birds, but the vesper-bird was shy, and eluded all his advances.
The Vesper-bird, however, is the least familiar of the two, and, when both are singing at the same time, will be found to occupy a position more remote from the house than the other. In several localities, these two species are distinguished by the names of Bush-Sparrow and Ground-Sparrow, from their supposed different habits of placing their nests, one in a bush and the other on the ground.
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