1899.] 1 83 



THE SONG OF BIRDS. 



Cries and Call-Notes of Wild Birds. With Musical Illustrations. 

 By C. A. WiTCHEi.iv, Author of " Evolution of Bird-Song," &c. 

 London : L,. Upcott Gill, 1899. is. 



It is a gratifying sign of the times that there is a demand for a shilling 

 manual on the notes of birds. To a naturalist it is not less essential to 

 learn something of the language of our feathered favourites than to 

 study their plumage, nests, eggs, migration, and food ; but on all the 

 above topics the student has access to vast store-houses of knowledge in 

 the shape of books, pictures, museums, and private collections. Sounds, 

 however, cannot be collected, like eggs, nor recorded with exactness, 

 like dates of arrival, or contents of crops and pellets ; and for this reason 

 every beginner has to learn more for himself on the language of birds 

 than on most other ornithological matters. The few attempted guide- 

 books that have been written are experimental rather than recognized 

 primers ; such, for instance, is Mr. Ilett's " Dictionary of Bird-Notes," 

 of which it remains to be seen whether -the bulk of the syllabic render- 

 ings will be recognized when the notes they are intended to represent 

 are heard. 



Mr. Witchell is well entitled to speak with authority on a subject 

 which he has already treated so excellently in his former work. At the 

 same time, we might have hoped for a better book than the one before 

 us from the author of the " Evolution of Bird-Song." We must decidedly 

 object to his perverse arrangement of birds into " Town," " Woodland," 

 "Upland," and "Waterside" — a classification which makes reference, 

 even in so small a book, exasperatingly difficult, and has the strange 

 effect of placing the Carrion Crow in the first chapter, and the Hooded 

 Crow (a doubtfully distinct species) in the last. Then the whole group 

 of sea-haunting birds is omitted, except a few— as the Redshank and 

 Dunlin — which nest inland, and the Rock Pipit, which seems to have 

 slipped in inadvertently. The Sparrow-hawk, Woodcock, and Water 

 Rail are striking instances of inland birds of whose notes Mr. Witchell 

 has nothing to say—we may fairly ask, why ? The Water Rail is a 

 peculiarly noisy species, and, from its skulking habits, one of the most 

 likely to baffle the inquisitiveness of a puzzled audience; and the Wood- 

 cock's voice has often (though quite unlike) been mistaken for the 

 Nightjar's. These, moreover, are cries of marked character, which, if 

 not to be successfully syllabled, can at least be recognizably described ; 

 while we are strongly inclined to doubt altogether the distinctive value 

 of many such renderings of bird-sounds as Mr. WitchelPs "chick" 

 (Thrush), "chick" or "ching" (Dipper), "chip" (Tree-pipit and Corn- 

 bunting), "jigg" (House-martin), " sip " (Cirl-bunting), " sit '* (Crossbill 

 and Haw-finch), "twit" (Chaffinch), "whit" (Dabchick), "gick" or 

 "quet" (Greater Spotted Woodpecker), "tick" or "kink" (Lesser 

 Spotted Woodpecker), " clit " (Swallow), " quilp " (Redwing), " tink " 

 (Reed-bunting), "pink" (Chaffinch); bearing in mind that in all these 



