His notes consist of a clear mellow whistle, repeated at short intervals
as he gleams among the branches. There is in it a certain wild
plaintiveness and _naïveté_ extremely interesting. It is not uttered
with rapidity, but with the pleasing tranquillity of a careless
ploughboy, whistling for amusement. Since the streets of some of the
American towns have been planted with Lombardy poplars, the orioles are
constant visiters, chanting their native "wood notes wild," amid the din
of coaches, wheelbarrows, and sometimes within a few yards of a bawling
oysterwoman.

The _Virginian Nightingale_, _Red Bird_, or _Cardinal
Grosbeak_, has great clearness, variety, and melody in his notes,
many of which resemble the higher notes of a fife, and are nearly as
loud. He sings from March till September, and begins early in the dawn,
and repeating a favourite stanza twenty or thirty times successively,
and often for a whole morning together, till, like a good story too
frequently repeated, it becomes quite tiresome. He is very sprightly,
and full of vivacity; yet his notes are much inferior to those of the
wood, or even of the brown thrush.

The whole song of the _Black-throated Bunting_ consists of five, or
rather two, notes; the first repeated twice and very slowly, the third
thrice and rapidly, resembling _chip_, _chip_, _che-che-che_;
of which ditty he is by no means parsimonious, but will continue it for
hours successively. His manners are much like those of the European
yellow-hammer, sitting, while he sings, on palings and low bushes.

The song of the _Rice Bird_ is highly musical. Mounting and
hovering on the wing, at a small height above the ground, he chants out
a jingling melody of varied notes, as if half a dozen birds were singing