134 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



number of books on birds which we possess; but let 

 any reader take down one from his shelves and try 

 to form a definite idea as to what this song is like 

 from the author's account. Some naturalists compare 

 it with the blackbird and missel-thrush. It is unlike 

 both, being a short set song, as in the chaffinch and 

 chifTchaff, without any variation and alike in every 

 individual; whereas the blackbird and missel-thrush 

 vary their phrases with every repetition of the song, 

 and no two individuals sing quite alike. In the quality 

 of the sound there is also some difference. Again, it 

 is frequently described as a warble, or warbled song, 

 which it is not. The word warble, as Mr. Warde 

 Fowler has said, is used of birds' singing in a sense 

 which may be guessed from Milton's lines: 



Fountains, and ye that warble as ye flow 

 Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise. 



"The word," he adds, "seems to express a kind of 

 singing which is soft, continuous, and legato." It is 

 precisely because they sing in this way that several 

 of our smaller songsters, including the blackcap 

 and willow-wren, have received the English generic 

 name of Warblers. 



The song is also variously characterised as de- 

 sultory, wild, monotonous, sweet, plaintive, mellow, 

 fluty, which is all wrong, and if by chance one word 

 had been right it would have given us no definite 

 idea of the ring-ouzel's song — its shape. It is a whistle, 

 repeated three and sometimes four times without 

 pause, uttered at short intervals twenty or thirty or 

 more times. Let the reader think of any such word 



