This was the more to be regretted because of the readiness with which he accepted his fate. He became tame in a week after capture, and readily took food from the fingers. From the first he never made the least effort to escape, but seemed perfectly contented, so long as he was alone. It was the presence of intruders--as he regarded them--that he resented so fatally.
One of this most interesting family, Townsend's fly-catching thrush (_Myadestes Townsendii_) is resident in the mountains of Colorado, and it is pleasing to see how the most scientific and the least emotional of chroniclers fall into rapture over his song. "Never have I heard a more delightful chorus of bird music," says one. "The song can be compared to nothing uttered by any other bird I have heard," says another. "A most exquisite song in which the notes of purple finch, wood thrush, and winter wren are blended into a silvery cascade of melody that ripples and dances down the mountain-side as clear and sparkling as the mountain brook," says a third.
Charles Dudley Warner, who found the clarin a favorite cage bird in Mexico, says of his song (in "Mexican Notes"): "Its long, liquid, full-throated note is more sweet and thrilling than any other bird note I have ever heard; it is hardly a song, but a flood of melody, elevating, inspiring as the skylark, but with a touch of the tender melancholy of the nightingale in the night."
One whole year I entertained in my bird-room an individual of strongly marked character, an orchard oriole. Wishing to study his habits, I put a pair of this species into a big cage, hoping they would live happily, as did other couples in the room at the same time. The pretty little yellow and olive dame was amiable enough,--she could live in peace with any bird in the room; but her comrade rebelled against the decrees of man. He was an autocrat; he intended to have his house to himself, and, more, he purposed to appropriate any other residence he chose to select, whoever might claim it. Hostilities began the moment the door was shut upon them; he drove her away from the food-cup, he fought her over the bathing-dish, he answered her sweet call with a harsh "chack" or an insulting "huff," he twitched her feathers if she came near him, and gave her a peck if she seemed to be having too easy a time. Withal, such was his villainous temper that he desired a victim to abuse, and never let her out of his sight for two minutes, lest she should enjoy something he could deprive her of. She was of a happy temperament; she contented herself with what was given her. If she could not have pear, she cheerfully ate bread and milk; while if my lord could not have pear, he would starve. She had large dark eyes, and soft, delicate colors, with legs and feet the tint of light blue kid; but her liege lord was in the immature plumage of the second year, with black mask covering his small eyes.