It was
long, however, before we identified this mysterious wing-singer as the
little brown jack snipe that we knew so well and had so often watched
as he silently probed the mud around the edges of our meadow stream
and spring-holes, and made short zigzag flights over the grass
uttering only little short, crisp quacks and chucks.
The love-songs of the frogs seemed hardly less wonderful than those of
the birds, their musical notes varying from the sweet, tranquil,
soothing peeping and purring of the hylas to the awfully deep low-bass
blunt bellowing of the bullfrogs. Some of the smaller species have
wonderfully clear, sharp voices and told us their good Bible names in
musical tones about as plainly as the whip-poor-will. _Isaac, Isaac;
Yacob, Yacob; Israel, Israel_; shouted in sharp, ringing, far-reaching
tones, as if they had all been to school and severely drilled in
elocution. In the still, warm evenings, big bunchy bullfrogs bellowed,
_Drunk! Drunk! Drunk! Jug o' rum! Jug o' rum_! and early in the
spring, countless thousands of the commonest species, up to the throat
in cold water, sang in concert, making a mass of music, such as it
was, loud enough to be heard at a distance of more than half a mile.
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