Bobolink is perhaps the most emblematic of the grassland dwellers. Its cheerfulness is countered by the mournful and slurred whistle of the Eastern Meadowlark. Among the rarest of the region’s grassland birds is the Upland Sandpiper, which gives a loud empathic call that sounds in part like it’s being produced by a slide whistle. The sandpiper’s song often begins with an ascending chatter and ends with a single drawn-out note that slowly descends in pitch. There is indeed no lack of intriguing bird songs that are capable of hooking an ear and reeling in the imagination. Long before I became adept at telling one bird species’ voice from another, I recall having my attention stolen away by certain bird melodies. One late afternoon in June, many years ago and when I was still a teenager, I was lured away from a gathering of friends by a siren’s song emanating from the forest. That day, we were exploring the outskirts of Deerfield and a ramshackle house of a man he referred to as “Pirate Jack.” I got out of the car and Fritz led me around to the back of the house, where we found Jack quietly conspiring with two of his pirate friends. At first glance Jack looked straight-laced and seemed an unlikely pirate, while his friends looked like they
could’ve easily been cast as hit men in a the early evening as it would have been in 1940’s gangster movie. They were sitting the early morning, but it was June, and back around a table up on a high porch that over- then even a small ensemble was enough to looked a wooded yard. The yard was stud- overwhelm my untrained ear. It was hard ded with dead appliances and a few wrecked for me to discern individual singers, but one cars. You could say that the elevated porch songster did stand out. It produced a sound looked something like the bow of a ship jutting out over the yard. I The Louisiana Waterthrush sings in suppose it was wooded ravines slightly like a pirate ship. Jack and his friends had a pellet gun, which they used to take turns firing away at the cars and other junk in the yard. I sat back and allowed the sounds of the woods beyond the yard and beyond the antics of the pirates to permeate my brain. The chorus of birdsong is not as intense in
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