o be looked
after, a human being, such as he was accustomed to see pass by, taking
possession of a part of the bobolink domain, he flew boldly to a small
tree a few yards from me. He alighted on the top twig, in plain sight,
and proceeded to "look me over," a performance which I returned with
interest. He was silent only a few seconds, but the sound that came from
his beak amazed me; it was a "mew." If the cat-bird cry resembles that
of a cat, this was a perfect copy of a kitten's weak wail. It was always
uttered twice in close succession, and sometimes followed by a harsh
note that proclaimed his blackbird strain, a "chack!"

His utterance was thus: "mew, mew (quickly), chack!" and I interpreted
it into a warning to me to leave the premises. I did not go, however,
and after several repetitions his vigilance began to relax. He was
really so full of sweet summer madness that it was impossible to keep up
the role of stern guardian of the nests under the veil of buttercups and
daisies, which he knew all the time I could never find. So, when he
opened his mouth to say "chack," a note or two would irresistibly bubble
out beside it, as if he said, "You really must go away, my big friend.
We cannot have you in our fields;--but, after all, isn't the morning
delicious?"

After a long conflict between desire to sing and his conviction of duty
as special policeman, which ludicrously suggested Mr. Dick in his
struggle between longing to be foolish with David Copperfield and to be
grave to please Miss Betsy, he fairly gave in and did sing--and such a
burst! Everybody has tried his hand at characterizing this bird's
incomparable song, but no one has fully expressed it, for words are not
capable of it. Perhaps Mrs. Spofford has caught the spirit as well as
any one:--

"Last year methinks the bobolinks
Filled the low fields with vagrant tune,
The sweetest songs of sweetest June--
Wild spurts of frolic, always gladly
Bubbling, doubling, brightly troubling,
Bubbling rapturously, madly."

Expressing himself was so great a relief to my bobolink, after his
unnatural gravity of demeanor, that he repeated the performance again
and again. I say repeated it; I found that he had two ways of beginning,
but after he got into his ecstasy I could think of nothing but how
marvelous it was, so that whether the two differed all through I am not
sure. It was every time a new rapture to me as well as to him. One of
his beginnings that