SrMMER BIRDS ABOUT BARNSLEY. 243 



song— the readiest discriminating test of all three species — is not heard. The 

 male, as I have proved in most species of this kind, has, in addition to its 

 song, the same call-note as the female. Indeed I should have hesitated to 

 pronounce the note aught else than that of the Willow Wren, had I not, 

 while listening to a pair of ChifF Chaffs near to their nest, heard the ^chil 

 chir note repeatedly break, through a sort of chip chopping strain, into a 

 plaining tweet, and the usual male note or song again resumed. The call- note, 

 just described as resembling that of the Willow Wren, was uttered by the 

 hen also : it will ^require long practise to distinguish them from each other, 

 or from the kindred bird alluded to. It is difficult to represent sounds by 

 written characters. It would be desirable for some phonographic principle to 

 be applied in teaching the notes of birds to learners; there would not be such 

 a confused mixture made of it. The word 'tweet,' for instance, is not improperly 

 applied in describing the song of the Willow Wren, but it serves badly for 

 that of the Wood Wren, as used by the great authorities, Yarrell and 

 Macgillivray, and copied by others. The 'tzit, tzit' of Blyth duly modulated 

 is much better. 



April 16th. — -This day is memorable for the first sight of those pleasing 

 emblems of spring, the Swallows, which were seen skimming with graceful 

 evolutions over the windings of the Dearne in Grange meadows, a locality 

 where they are generally first observed in this part. 



April 17th. — This morning I and the same friend took the omnibus and 

 dropped down at Lund Wood, and traversed its vast undulating slopes, dis- 

 playing in its interior depths many features of the advancing spring, not 

 exhibited by its exterior aspect; where the fresh green birch distinctly standing 

 out from the dark green mass of slowly- budding trees, presents the most 

 striking character. Within the golden-brown flower is peeping out from its 

 enveloping bud, and the Stellaria holosfea has begun to mingle at intervals 

 its white star-like petals with the deep azure of the Harebell. Many of the 

 larger birds were observed, engaged in pairing and nesting avocations; amongst 

 which were the graceful hovering Kestrel, the chattering Magpie, the cooing 

 Wood Pigeon, the Carrion Crow, and ''the beauteous Jay, with shrill wild 

 scream." 



The number of large birds observed this season about our ample-screening 

 woods, is gratifying to contemplate. When wc consider the many enemies which 

 their striking peculiarities and marked colours, their money-value, and their 

 obnoxiousness to popular and often unjust prejudice, have raised up against 

 them — in the shape of wanton bird-nesters, remorseless keepers, and still more 

 destructive skin-collectors; more fatal, because aiming at the rarest birds, and 

 confessedly more greedy than the ends of science require; as there are now 

 museums amply sufficient for accurate description or classification. Our noblest 

 birds of the Falcon family, as Waterton emphatically remarked to me, are 

 gone, and the rest, with the exception of the Kestrel, are fast following 

 the fate of the Bustard and Bittern; the former a bird of the past, the latter 



