more distinguishable
than at other times. The birds which are thus, as it were, associated
with the Wren, in this noonday concert, are the Bobolink, the Cat-bird,
and the two Warbling Fly-catchers, occasionally joined by the few and
simple notes of the Summer Yellow-bird. If we are in the vicinity of
the deep woods, we may also hear, at this hour, the loud and shrill
voice of the Golden-Crowned Thrush, a bird that is partial to the heat
of noon.

Of all these, however, the Wren is the most remarkable, having a note
that is singularly varied and animated. He exhibits great compass and
power of execution, but wants variety in his tones. He begins very
sharp and shrill, like a grasshopper, then suddenly falls to a series
of low guttural notes, and ascends, like the rolling of a drum, to
another series of high notes, rapidly trilled. Almost without a pause,
he recommences with his querulous insect-chirp, and proceeds through
the same trilling and demi-semiquavering as before. He is not
particular about the part of the song which he makes his closing note,
but will leave off right in the middle of a strain, when he appears to
be in the height of ecstasy, to pick up a spider or a fly.

As the Wren raises two broods of young in a season, his notes are
prolonged to a late period of the summer, being frequently heard in the
second or third week in August. He leaves for a southern clime about
the first of October. In his migratory habits he differs from the
European Wren, which is a constant resident in his native regions.

Our American birds, like the American flowers, have not been celebrated
in classic song. They are scarcely known, except to our own people, and
they have not in general been exalted by praise above their real
merits. We read, both in prose and verse, the praises of the European
Lark, Linnet, and Nightingale, and the English Robin Redbreast has been
immortalized in song. But the American Robin, (_Turdus migratorius_,)
though surnamed Redbreast, is a bird of different species and different
habits. Little has been written about him, and he enjoys but little
celebrity; he has never been puffed and overpraised, and, though
universally admired, the many who admire him are diffident all the
while, lest they are mistaken in their judgment and are wasting their
admiration upon an object that is unworthy of it, and whose true merits
fall short of their own estimate.

I shall not ask pardon of those critics who are