I remember
noticing the distress of a pair of robins during the violent earthquake
of the year 1872, when the pines of the Valley, with strange movements,
flapped and waved their branches, and beetling rock-brows came
thundering down to the meadows in tremendous avalanches. It did not
occur to me in the midst of the excitement of other observations to look
for the ouzels, but I doubt not they were singing straight on through it
all, regarding the terrible rock-thunder as fearlessly as they do the
booming of the waterfalls.
What may be regarded as the separate songs of the Ouzel are exceedingly
difficult of description, because they are so variable and at the same
time so confluent. Though I have been acquainted with my favorite ten
years, and during most of this time have heard him sing nearly every
day, I still detect notes and strains that seem new to me. Nearly all of
his music is sweet and tender, lapsing from his round breast like water
over the smooth lip of a pool, then breaking farther on into a sparkling
foam of melodious notes, which, glow with subdued enthusiasm, yet
without expressing much of the strong, gushing ecstasy of the bobolink
or skylark.
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