This applies chiefly to birds, but even among birds there
are exceptions, as we have seen in the case of the field-finch, Sycalis
luteola. The love-excitement is doubtless pleasurable to them, and it
takes the form in which keenly pleasurable emotions are habitually
expressed, although not infrequently with variations due to the greater
intensity of the feeling. In some migrants the males arrive before the
females, and no sooner have they recovered from the effects of their
journey than they burst out into rapturous singing; these are not
love-strains, since the females have not yet arrived, and pairing-time
is perhaps a mouth distant; their singing merely expresses their
overflowing gladness. The forest at that season is vocal, not only with
the fine melody of the true songsters, but with hoarse cawings, piercing
cries, shrill duets, noisy choruses, drummings, boomings, trills,
wood-tappings--every sound with which different species express the glad
impulse; and birds like the parrot that only exert their powerful voices
in screamings--because "they can do no other"--then scream their
loudest. When courtship begins it has in many cases the effect of
increasing the beauty of the performance, giving added sweetness, verve,
and brilliance to the song, and freedom and grace to the gestures and
motions. But, as I have said, there are exceptions. Thus, some birds
that are good melodists at other times sing in a feeble, disjointed
manner during courtship.
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