102 DUBLIN NATUBAL HISTORY SOClETr. 



common bunting, and goldfinch. Next, wo shall consider the causes, &c., which 

 tend to, or at least appear to tend to, the regulating the commencement and re- 

 gularity of continuance of song. The first agent, most decidedly, is the wea- 

 ther ; wind appears to •xercise great influence over song ; cold, windy days are 

 generally songless. The effects of high gales are often most striking, causing 

 even a total silence in places where on the days both preceding and following 

 its occurrence we have had a full choir. Thus, on the 13th January, 1851 , which 

 is noted as high wind, there were no birds at all singing, though on the 12th 

 I have the following noted: — Blackbird, thrush, robin, dunnock, and chaflinch; 

 and on the 14th, fauvetto, blackbird, thrush, and robin. I have, though rarely, 

 heard the robin and fauvette sing in the middle of a gale, but they did not sing 

 for any length of time. Soft, calm mornings, especially if accompanied by 

 drizzle, are usually favourable to song; on such mornings, as I stated before, 

 the blackbird's song is remarkably mellow and sweet. The song-thrush does 

 not appear to like this sort of weather, as he is generally silent ; his kinsmen, 

 the redwings and fieldfares, usually choose such mornings to record on, as well 

 as the starlings, greenfinches, and linnets. Frost, unless very severe, does not 

 exercise much influence on song : indeed, sunny, clear, frosty days bring out the 

 wrens in force, and on such mornings you generally hear the goldcrest in early 

 spring. Snow, if of long continuance, and early in the year, generally silences 

 every songster, except, perhaps, the robin. I have heard the lark, too, singing 

 during a snow-storm. Later in the season, however, it influences them but 

 little, as you have had a notable instance this spring (1853). I suppose the 

 month of March is still fresh in your memories, so that I need not remind you 

 that it began to snow on Patrick's Day, and continued, with intermissions, 

 nearly to the end of the month ; during all this time, whenever the sun shone, 

 we had birds singing. Thus — "March 20, heavy snow, ground covered, robin 

 singing." My notes of the 22nd I have already quoted, when speaking of ni^ht 

 singers. *'23rd, College Botanic Gardens : cold day, snow on ground, snowmg 

 heavily; birds singing: robin, thrush, skylark, greenfinch, very powerfully, and, 

 after a while, the snow nearly ceasing, the chaffinch, dunnock, and wren, struck 

 up." 



Perhaps you will ask, what then is the most favourable sort of day for 

 song ? In the spring, choose one of those calm, clear, frosty days we so often 

 have towards the end of February ; not a breath abroad ; a dead, unearthly 

 stillness in the air; a clear blue sky overhead ; a sun shorn of his heat, but not 

 of his brightness. Now the wren revels, singing, on the top of some bush, or 

 darting from bough to bough with quivering wings ; the robin pours out all his 

 soul ; the lark, as the poet hath it — 



** Higher still and higher, from the earth now springeth, 

 Like a cloud of fire the deep blue he wingeth. 

 And singing still doth soar, and soaring ever singeth." 



The thrush excels in melody — the tender fauvette dares to trust himself with 

 song on some spray, all diamond-tipped by the frost ; the yellowhammer utters 

 his spring strain while in the tops of the fir-trees ; the various tits keep up an 

 incessant sawing ; and, between whiles, from some deep sheltered glade, the 

 blackbird's mellow note is heard. For summer songsters, choose we a day op- 

 posite in many characters to this — a true summer's day, a sun almost vertical, 

 a sky cloudless, or, at least, its azure broken but by a few small fleeces of a 

 snowy whiteness, not a breath stirring — a blue glimmering haze, which might 

 almost be handled, rising in waves all over the country, all the insect tribes dis- 

 porting and dancing in the sun's beams — a balmy, lazy feel in the air, a stilly 

 calmness all around— then take your station in some mountain-stream gorge, 

 the sides of the hill clad with trees, the streams fringed with bushes and 

 brambles ; on its banks, meadows studded with occasional tufts of yellow furze 

 — from some rock in the stream you will hear the soft, low song of the dipper, 

 and the pleasing strain of the wagtails ; from the brakes along its sides the 



