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they be, they communicate the alarm to each other, by a plaintive note, nor will they then jerk or call, though the wild birds are

near.

*

It is in the Insessorial ordert of birds that the songsters abound, but there is one remarkable exception among the Raptorial order, in that warbling African, Le Faucon Chanteur of Le Vaillant, perhaps the only known bird of prey-Cuvier says the only known one-that sings agreeably. Its song is very sweet, but dangerous as the lay of the Syrens, and

"Mocks the dead bones that lie scattered by."

Few spots are more musical with song-birds than these islands. Not that the woods of America are mute-but they want the brilliant variety of ours; and one of her sons, who has so well deserved of the lovers of natural history in all countries, has endeavoured to colonize the Transatlantic groves with the feathered songsters of Britain. And yet they have that wonderful polyglot the mock-bird.§ Him we have seen and heard in captivity, and-but Wilson has immortalized the bird with his graphic pen, and, in all humility, we lay down ours.

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'The ease, elegance, and rapidity of his movements, the animation of his eye, and the intelligence he displays in listening and laying up lessons from almost every species of the feathered creation within his hearing, are really surprising, and mark the peculiarity of his genius. To these qualities we may add that of a voice full, strong, and musical, and capable of almost every modulation, from the clear mellow tones of the wood-thrush, to the savage screams of the bald eagle. In measure and accent, he faithfully follows his originals. In force and sweetness of expression, he greatly improves upon them. In his native groves, mounted on the top of a tall bush or half-grown tree, in the dawn of a dewy morning, while the woods are already vocal with a multitude of warblers, his admirable song rises pre-eminent over every competitor. The ear can listen to his music alone, to which that of all the others seems a mere accompaniment. Neither is this strain altogether imitative. His own native notes, which are easily distinguishable by such as are well acquainted with those of our various song birds, are bold and full, and varied seemingly beyond all limits. They consist of short expressions of two, three, or at the most five or six syllables; generally interspersed with limitations, and all of them uttered with great emphasis and rapidity; and continued, with undiminished ardour, for half an

* Barrington on the small birds of flight. + Insessores-Perching birds.

Falco musicus of Daudin. § Orpheus polyglottus.

hour or an hour at a time; his expanded wings and tail, glistening with white, and the buoyant gaiety of his action, arresting the eye, as his song most irresistibly does the ear. He sweeps round with enthusiastic ecstasy-he mounts and descends as his song swells or dies away; and, as my friend Mr. Bartram has beautifully expressed it, "He bounds aloft with the celerity of an arrow, as if to recover or recall his very soul, expired in the last elevated strain." While thus exerting himself, a bystander, destitute of sight, would suppose that the whole feathered tribes had assembled together on a trial of skill, each striving to produce the utmost effect, so perfect are his imitations. He many times deceives the sportsman, and sends him in search of birds that perhaps are not within miles of him, but whose notes he exactly imitates; even birds themselves are frequently imposed on by this admirable mimic, and are decoyed by the fancied calls of their mates, or dive with precipitation into the depths of thickets, at the scream of what they suppose to be the sparrow-hawk. The mocking-bird loses little of the power and energy of his song by confinement. In his domesticated state, when he commences his career of song, it is impossible to stand by uninterested. He whistles for the dog; Cæsar starts up, wags his tail, and runs to meet his master. He squeaks out like a hurt chicken, and the hen hurries about with hanging wings, and bristled feathers, clucking to protect its injured brood. The barking of the dog, the mewing of the cat, the creaking of a passing wheelbarrow, follow, with great truth and rapidity. He repeats the tune taught him by his master, though of considerable length, fully and faithfully. He runs over the quiverings of the canary, and the clear whistlings of the Virginia nightingale or red-bird, with such superior execution and effect, that the mortified songsters feel their own inferiority, and become altogether silent, while he seems to triumph in their defeat by redoubling his exertions. * Both in his native and domesticated state, during the solemn stillness of night, as soon as the moon rises in silent majesty, he begins his delightful solo, and serenades us the livelong night with a full display of his vocal powers, making the whole neighbourhood ring with his inimitable medley."

* * * * * * * *

But we must return to the singing birds of Britain, which may be divided into two classes, the regular visitors and the residents. Food is the principal motive that induces migration on the part of the former, which, like Grisi, Tamburini, Rubini, and, though last not least, Lablache, leave the more genial climes of the south to shiver in the spring of our more austere shores, delighting our ears, and revelling in the harvest made ready for them. But we are not entirely dependent on these warbling strangers, for we

number among our residents many birds that in sweetness of tone, if not in brilliancy of execution, rival their visiters.

What with the influenza and the cutting easterly winds, it has been, Heaven knows, a bitter black season for us unfeathered bipeds, but it has been worse than bitter for the birds. a month was the

"Month before the month of May !"

well did it justify the corresponding line, telling us that "The spring comes slowly up this way."

What

The berries were almost all gone, the insects, wisely, came not forth, and, in short, the supplies were all but stopped. Verily there hath not been much disposition

"To forestal sweet Saint Valentine"

this year. But now, while we are writing, the redstart, which seldom, it is true, appears among us before the middle of April, and is often not seen till the end of that month, is running on the grass plat, picking up its insect-food, and vibrating its tail at the close of every run, its white cap and black gorget contrasting strongly in the sunshine. It is a blessed change. The swallows are come, and they do make a spring, if not a summer.

When we proceed to enumerate the different species of singing birds, we shall inquire as to the time of year when each may be considered, generally speaking, to be in full song. At present we shall merely observe, that it depends in great measure both upon the health and spirits of the individual, and the state of the weather. Not that any of them, hardly, are to be heard in anything like full song in January, except very rarely. February, March, and April, are more and more tunable. Often, in the latter month, the chill gloomy morning, rendered more dreary by a cutting easterly wind, clears away into a fine warm afternoon. In such mornings, while Eurus predominates, everything around is silent with the exception of the murmur of the brook; but the wind changes, the clouds disperse, forth breaks the sun, the insects swarm, the tuneful stream becomes alive with the rising trouts, and the groves burst out into melody.

In May, "the mother of love," the year is more confirmed, and every garden, orchard, and copse rivals the singing tree of the Arabian story. Now it is that the full power of song is developed; witness the clear mellow pipe of that blackbird perched on the tallest acacia in the garden, while his mate, with half-shut eyes, and pressing her little ones to her bosom, listens in security on her nest in yonder hawthorn hedge spangled with its dewy Mayflower blossoms.

May, 1837.

SINGING BIRDS-RESIDENTS.

"Within the bush, her covert nest
A little linnet fondly prest,

The dew sat chilly on her breast,
Sae early in the morning."

BURNS.

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No: : every green thing has not been sacrificed to the FrostGenius. Nights, rivalling the Iron Nights of the Swedish calendar, have, indeed, done their work; and it may be doubted whether the horticulturist has had so much cause for lamentation since the 66 Black Spring" of 1771. Numbers are mourning their dead rhododendrons, azalias, and magnolias, and not a few have to sigh over their withered bays, to say nothing of laurustinuses and roses :-even the hardy holly has, in some places, perished in its death-struggle with the weather.

The determined lingering of winter in the lap of spring seems to have checked every effort of vegetable life, producing one of the most backward seasons remembered. This has had its effect upon the Singing Birds; for, as the food of their nestlings consists almost entirely of caterpillars and of insects generally in the early stages of development, or of worms and slugs, all of which depend upon plants for subsistence, their song, and incubation-there have been exceptions, doubtless-are late this year. We saw one instance of the ravenous eagerness with which the half-starved creatures attacked and made prey of some of the first flowers that dared to show themselves. On a fine sunny morning after the first of the one or two comparatively warm nights that came in March, the garden, which on the preceding day had "made no sign," was bright with crocuses-every one of which the birds devoured or destroyed before noon.

Of all the British resident Song-birds, the Merulida are the most remarkable for the strength of their vocal powers, and the first of this family that claims our attention, for it is a brumal as well as an early vernal songster, is a very curious bird, not uncommon in some localities, but extremely rare in others, and concerning which much of the marvellous has been written.

If

we are to believe some authors, the Water-Ouzel, Water Blackbird, or Dipper,* Der Wasserschwätzer of the Germans, Merle d'eau of the French, and Tordo del agua of the Spaniards, deliberately descends into the water, and walks about on the botttom of the stream with the same ease and complacency as if it were stepping on the dry land. Now, to say nothing of that extremely impracticable law of which we are reminded every hour of the day, and more especially "when china falls," the structure of the bird itself is not adapted for such a feat; and though we have no doubt of its subaqueous habits, which have food more than frolic for their object, we are more than sceptical as to its pedestrian performances in such a situation. Mr. Macgillivray, who writes as none can write who have not beheld what they write about, informs us that he has seen the Dipper moving under water in situations where he could observe it with certainty, and he found that its actions were precisely similar to those of the Divers, Mergansers, and Cormorants, which he had often watched from an eminence as they pursued the shoals of sand-eels along the shores of the Hebrides. It, in fact, flew; not merely employing the wing from the carpal joint, but extending it considerably, and availing itself of the whole expanse, just as it would have done if it had been moving in the air. The general direction of the body was obliquely downwards; and great force was evidently used to counteract buoyancy, the bird finding it difficult to keep itself at the bottom. Mr. Macgillivray remarks that Colonel Montagu well describes the appearance which it presents under such circumstances; and the former goes on to state that, in one or two instances where he has been able to perceive it under water, it appeared to tumble about in a very extraordinary manner, with its head downwards, as if pecking something, and at the same time great exertion of both wings and legs was used. The bird was, we doubt not, at this time capturing the fresh-water mollusca and insect-larvæ which form its principal aliment. When searching for food, the Dipper, according to Mr. Macgillivray, does not proceed to great distances under water; but, alighting on some spot, sinks, and soon reappears in the immediate neighbourhood, when it either dives again, or rises on the wing to drop somewhere else on the water, or to settle on an insulated stone in the midst of the brook. The same ornithologist broadly, and, as we believe, truly, states that the assertion of its walking below the surface, which some persons have ventured, is neither made good by observation nor countenanced by reason. Its short legs, and long, curved claws, are, as he says, very ill adapted for running,

* Cinclus aquaticus-Turdus Cinclus of Linnæus.

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