Many songsters in widely different families possess the habit of soaring
and falling alternately while singing, and in some cases all the aerial
postures and movements, the swift or slow descent, vertical, often, with
oscillations, or in a spiral, and sometimes with a succession of smooth
oblique lapses, seem to have an admirable correspondence with the
changing and falling voice--melody and motion being united in a more
intimate and beautiful way than in the most perfect and poetic forms of
human dancing.
One of the soaring singers is a small yellow field-finch of La
Plata--Sycalis luteola; and this species, like some others, changes the
form of its display with the seasons. It lives in immense flocks, and
during the cold season it has, like most finches, only aerial pastimes,
the birds wheeling about in a cloud, pursuing each other with lively
chirpings. In August, when the trees begin to blossom, the flock betakes
itself to a plantation, and, sitting on the branches, the birds sing in
a concert of innumerable voices, producing a great volume of sound, as
of a high wind when heard at a distance. Heard near, it is a great mass
of melody; not a confused tangle of musical sounds as when a host of
Troupials sing in concert, but the notes, although numberless, seem to
flow smoothly and separately, producing an effect on the ear similar to
that which rain does on the sight, when the sun shines on and lightens
up the myriads of falling drops all falling one way.
Pages:
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274