which the owl hooted twice in response to some
peculiarly happy efforts on my part, and then actually came back again
for another look. This proved sufficient, and he quickly disappeared;
retiring to his leafy covert or hollow tree, to meditate, no doubt, on
the strange creature whose unseasonable noises had disturbed his
afternoon slumbers. Likely enough he could not readily fall asleep again
for wondering how I could possibly find my way through the woods in the
darkness of daylight. So difficult is it, we may suppose, for even an
owl to put himself in another's place and see with another's eyes.

This little episode over, I turned again to the birch-tree, and
fortunately the warbler's throat was of too fiery a color to remain long
concealed; though it was at once a pleasure and an annoyance to find
myself still unacquainted with at least one song out of the
Blackburnian's repertory. In times past I had carefully attended to his
music, and within only a few days, in the White Mountain Notch, I had
taken note of two of its variations; but here was still another, which
neither began with _zillup, zillup_, nor ended with _zip, zip_,--notes
which I had come to look upon as the Blackburnian's sign-vocal. Yet it
must have been my fault, not his, that I failed to recognize him; for
every bird's voice has something characteristic about it, just as every
human voice has tones and inflections which those who are sufficiently
familiar with its owner will infallibly detect. The ear feels them,
although words cannot describe them. Articulate speech is but a modern
invention, as it were, in comparison with the five senses; and since
practice makes perfect, it is natural enough that every one of the five
should easily, and as a matter of course, perceive shades of difference
so slight that language, in its present rudimentary state, cannot begin
to take account of them.

The other warblers at Owl's Head, as far as they came under my notice,
were the black-and-white creeper, the blue yellow-backed warbler, the
Nashville, the black-throated green, the black-throated blue, the
yellow-rumped, the chestnut-sided, the oven-bird (already spoken of),
the small-billed water thrush, the Maryland yellow-throat, the Canadian
flycatcher, and the redstart.

The water thrush (I saw only one individual) was by the lake-side, and
within a rod or two of the bowling alley. What a strange, composite
creature he is! thrush, warbler, and sandpiper all