power.

He is the only songster of my acquaintance excepting the canary, that
displays different degrees of proficiency in the exercise of his
musical gifts. Not long since, while walking one Sunday in the edge of
an orchard adjoining a wood, I heard one that so obviously and
unmistakably surpassed all his rivals, that my companion, although
slow to notice such things, remarked it wonderingly; and with one
accord we paused to listen to so rare a performer. It was not
different in quality so much as in quantity. Such a flood of it! Such
copiousness! Such long, trilling, accelerating preludes! Such sudden,
ecstatic overtures would have intoxicated the dullest ear. He was
really without a compeer,--a master artist. Twice afterward I was
conscious of having heard the same bird.

The wood thrush is the handsomest species of this family. In grace
and elegance of manner he has no equal. Such a gentle, high-bred air,
and such inimitable ease and composure in his flight and movement! He
is a poet in very word and deed. His carriage is music to the eye. His
performance of the commonest act, as catching a beetle, or picking a
worm from the mud, pleases like a stroke of wit or eloquence. Was he a
prince in the olden time, and do the regal grace and mien still adhere
to him in his transformation? What a finely proportioned form! How
plain, yet rich, his color,--the bright russet of his back, the clear
white of his breast, with the distinct heart-shaped spots! It may be
objected to Robin that he is noisy and demonstrative; he hurries away
or rises to a branch with an angry note, and flirts his wings in
ill-bred suspicion. The mavis, or red thrush, sneaks and skulks like a
culprit, hiding in the densest alders; the catbird is a coquette and a
flirt, as well as a sort of female Paul Pry; and the chewink shows his