ing for the note of another bird, he is sure to be prompted to the
most loud and protracted singing, drowning all other sounds; if you sit
quietly down to observe a favorite or study a new-comer, his curiosity
knows no bounds, and you are scanned and ridiculed from every point of
observation. Yet I would not miss him; I would only subordinate him a
little, make him less conspicuous.

He is the parodist of the woods, and there is ever a mischievous,
bantering, half-ironical undertone in his lay, as if he were conscious
of mimicking and disconcerting some envied songster. Ambitious of song,
practicing and rehearsing in private, he yet seems the least sincere and
genuine of the sylvan minstrels, as if he had taken up music only to be
in the fashion, or not to be outdone by the robins and thrushes. In
other words, he seems to sing from some outward motive, and not from
inward joyousness. He is a good versifier, but not a great poet.
Vigorous, rapid, copious, not without fine touches, but destitute of any
high, serene melody, his performance, like that of Thoreau's squirrel,
always implies a spectator.

There is a certain air and polish about his strain, however, like that
in the vivacious conversation of a well-bred lady of the world, that
commands respect. His parental instinct, also, is very strong, and that
simple structure of dead twigs and dry grass is the centre of much
anxious solicitude. Not long since, while strolling through the woods,
my attention was attracted to a small densely-grown swamp, hedged in
with eglantine, brambles, and the everlasting smilax, from which
proceeded loud cries of distress and alarm, indicating that some
terrible calamity was threatening my sombre-colored minstrel. On
effecting an entrance, which, however, was not accomplished till I had
doffed coat and hat, so as to diminish the surface exposed to the thorns
and brambles, and, looking around me from a square yard of terra firma,
I found myself the spectator of a loathsome yet fascinating scene. Three
or four yards from me was the nest, beneath which, in long festoons,
rested a huge black snake; a bird two-thirds grown was slowly
disappearing between his expanded jaws. As he seemed unconscious of my
presence, I quietly observed the proceedings. By slow degrees he
compassed the bird about with his elastic mouth; his head flattened, his
neck writhed and swelled, and two or three undulatory movements of his
glistening body finished the wor