1 12 More about Birds. 



We have a bird common here, which, I fancy, is almost 

 unknown in other districts, for I have scarcely ever seen it in 

 collections ; and, from the few remarks about it and sketches 

 of it in natural histories, no correct idea can be formed. 

 I mean, 



The Dartford Warbler. Bewick had a bird before him, 

 stuffed, half a century ago, by some barbarian who was a grade 

 lower than our professional stuffers are now, and he had also 

 the name Dartford warbler; and so he went to work and cut out 

 a warbler. Later writers have " played at folio w-the-leader," 

 as some one, I forget who, deliciously observes; and, of course, 

 we have Bewick's Dartford warbler at the present hour. 

 Now, Sir, if you have ever watched a common wren (a kitty 

 wren we call her), you must have observed that she cocked 

 her tail bolt upright, strained her little beak at right angles, 

 and her throat in the same fashion, to make the most of her 

 fizgig of a song, and kept on jumping and jerking and frisk- 

 ing about, for all the world as though she was worked by 

 steam : well, that's the precise character of the Dartford 

 warbler, or, as we call it, the furze 'wren. When the leaves 

 are off the trees, and the chill winter winds have driven the 

 summer birds to the olive gardens of Spain, or across the 

 Straits, the furze wren is in the height of his enjoyment, I 

 have seen them by dozens skipping about the furze, lighting 

 for a moment upon the very point of the sprigs, and instantly 

 diving out of sight again, singing out their angry impatient 

 ditty, for ever the same. Perched on the outside of a good 

 tall nag, and riding quietly along the outside, while the fox- 

 hounds have been drawing the furze fields, I have seen the 

 tops of the furze quite alive with these birds. They are, 

 however, very hard to shoot ; darting down directly they see 

 the flash, or hear the cap crack, I don't know which. I have 

 seen excellent shots miss them, while rabbit-shooting with 

 beagles. They prefer those places where the furze is very 

 thick, high, and difficult to get in. The reason why natu- 

 ralists know so little of this bird is because they don't go the 

 right way to find it. Some of your London ornithologists, in 

 May, go peeping about Battersea fields and the Jamaica 

 market-gardens, or perhaps get as far this way as Cold 

 Harbour Lane, and boast of " thinking they saw a Dartford 

 warbler," just arrived from China, no doubt, with a lantern 

 fly in his bill. 



The Crossbill is by no means uncommon here in the winter. 

 I have seen them of every hue, from bright yellow-green to 

 bright red, and of all the intermediate shades between each 

 of these and dull brown. Strange as it may seem, the bright 



