III
There are some birds that cannot sing: the belted kingfisher, for instance; he can only rattle. You must hear him rattle. You can do as well yourself if you will shake a “pair of bones” or heave an anchor and let the chain run fast through the hawse-hole. You then must hear the downy woodpecker doing his rattling rat-ta-tat-tat-tat-tat (across the page and back again), as fast as rat-ta-tat can tat. How he makes the old dead limb or fence-post rattle as he drums upon it with his chisel bill. He can be heard half a mile around.
Then high-hole, the flicker (or golden-winged woodpecker), you must hear him yell, Up-up-up-up-up up-up-up-up-up-up,—a ringing, rolling, rapid kind of yodel that echoes over the spring fields.
IV
You must hear the nighthawk and the whip-poor-will. Both birds are to be heard at twilight, and the whip-poor-will far into the night. At the very break of dawn is also a good time to listen to them.
At dusk you will see (I have seen him from the city roofs in Boston) a bird about the size of a pigeon mounting up into the sky by short flights, crying peent, until far over your head the creature will suddenly turn and on half-closed wings dive headlong toward the earth, when, just before hitting the ground, upward he swoops, at the same instant making a weird booming sound, a kind of hollow groan with his wings, as the wind rushes through their large feathers. This diver through the dim ocean of air is the nighthawk. Let one of the birds dive close to your head on a lonely dusky road, and your hair will try to jump out from under your hat.
The whip-poor-will’s cry you all know. When you hear one this spring, go out into the twilight and watch for him. See him spring into the air, like a strange shadow, for flies; count his whip-poor-wills (he may call it more than a hundred times in as many seconds!). But hear a circle of the birds, if possible, calling through the darkness of a wood all around you!
V
There is one strange bird song that is half song and half dance that perhaps most of you may never be able to hear and see; but as it is worth going miles to hear, and nights of watching to witness, I am going to set it here as one of your outdoor tasks or feats: you must hear the mating song of the woodcock. I have described the song and the dance in “Roof and Meadow,” in the chapter called “One Flew East and One Flew West.” Mr. Bradford Torrey has an account of it in his “Clerk of the Woods,” in the chapter named “Woodcock Vespers.” To hear the song is a rare experience for the habitual watcher in the woods, but one that you might have the first April evening that you are abroad.