Editor [possibly Miles Greenleaf]. April 2, 1922. Cherink! Cherink [Towhee]! Omaha Sunday World-Herald 57(24=27): 8-E. A bird editorial.

Cherink! Cherink!

To those of us who delight in tramping the woodland and the tangled ravines in both winter and summer, the first remarks of the retiring Towhee come as a springtime kiss - a sort of salute by Mother Nature, who is good to her own!

He has many songs and carols, which develop as his amorous ardor increases, but he announces his return to the thickets which we prowl, with the single ejaculation -

"Cherink!"

This clinking, grating, undescribable observation on the part of Brer Towhee is a masterpiece of God's outdoor handiwork. It comes to us who "hike" as a remark from heaven itself.

It has none of the louder and more apparent choral beauties of the efforts of the Robin and the Bluebird - nor of the chattering year-around insistency of the Chickadee - but it chinks to us from forbidden messes of weeds and bushes, to say that spring has really arrived, and that somewhere, in a ground-nest hidden beneath some fallen twig of leaf-cluster - there is to be a large family of "Ground-Robins" born.

Presently these Towhees will cease their "Cherink" and will perch on a branch above that mysterious hard-to-find nest, and warble "See-Towhee!" with exasperating loveliness - while the lowly, sneaking Cowbird seeks the Chewink nest that humans seldom strike.

Blessed is this bird indeed! Beautiful, songful and mysterious. Protect it.

"Cherink!"