A TIRED TRAVELLER 97 



dreariest Philistines, the bird-fanciers or "avicultur- 

 ists," as they are beginning to call themselves, who 

 love a bird only when they hold it in the hateful 

 cage, the most iniquitous of man's many inventions, 

 have so far neglected this thrush. All the images 

 called up by the redwing, the sight or sound or thought 

 of him, are of rural winter scenes, and are pleasing, 

 especially those of the evening gatherings of redwings 

 in copse or shrubbery; for, like the linnet and 

 starling, they love to hold a kind of concert, or grand 

 musical confabulation or corroboree, in which all 

 the birds chirp, twitter and scream together before 

 settling down to sleep in the evergreens, which look 

 black in the twilight against the luminous evening 

 sky. In my case there are still other associations, for 

 it happens that the soft musical chirp of the redwing 

 reminds me vividly of other birds which have a sound 

 resembling it, birds that were dear to me in my boy- 

 hood and youth; one a true thrush, another the 

 social military starling of the grassy pampas and 

 Patagonia. That dark bird with the scarlet breast 

 and beautiful voice was to me, in winter time in 

 that distant land, what the redwing is to many an 

 English boy. 



Now as I rested there against the pile of brushwood 

 on which he sat so near me he continued to emit these 

 soft low chirping notes or little drops of musical 

 sound; and it seemed in part a questioning note, as 

 if he was asking me what I was ? Why I regarded 

 him so attentively ? What were my intentions to- 

 wards him ? And in part it was a soliloquy, and this 



