each other, are two other birds that come to us from the opposite
zone,--the torrid,--namely, the blue grosbeak and his petit duplicate,
the indigo-bird. The latter is a common summer resident with us,--a
bird of the groves and bushy fields, where his bright song may be heard
all through the long summer day. I hear it in the dry and parched
August when most birds are silent, sometimes delivered on the wing and
sometimes from the perch. Indeed, with me its song is as much a
midsummer sound as is the brassy crescendo of the cicada. The memory of
its note calls to mind the flame-like quiver of the heated atmosphere
and the bright glare of the meridian sun. Its color is much more
intense than that of the common bluebird, as summer skies are deeper
than those of April, but its note is less mellow and tender. Its
original, the blue grosbeak, is an uncertain wanderer from the south,
as the pine grosbeak is from the north. I have never seen it north of
the District of Columbia. It has a loud, vivacious song, of which it is
not stingy, and which is a large and free rendering of the indigo's,
and belongs to summer more than to spring. The bird is colored the same
as its lesser brother, the males being a deep blue and the females a
modest drab. Its nest is usually placed low down, as is the indigo's,
and the male carols from the tops of the trees in its vicinity in the
same manner. Indeed, the two birds are strikingly alike in every
respect except in size and in habitat, and, as in each of the other
cases, the lesser bird is, as it were, the point, the continuation, of
the larger, carrying its form and voice forward as the reverberation
carries the sound.

I know the ornithologists, with their hair-splittings, or rather
feather-splittings, point out many differences, but they are
unimportant. The fractions may not agree, but the whole numbers are the
same.