188 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



talk with snatches of song — it is all this combined 

 which has served to make the blackbird a favourite 

 and more to most of us as a songster than any other, 

 not excepting the nightingale. If the editor of some 

 widely circulating newspaper would put the question 

 to the vote, the blackbird would probably come first, 

 in spite of the myths and traditions which have 

 endeared certain other species to us from childhood 

 — the cuckoo the messenger of spring, the dove that 

 mourns for its love, and Philomel leaning her breast 

 upon a thorn; the temple-building martlet, and 

 robin redbreast who in winter comes to us for crumbs 

 and has so great an affection for our kind that in 

 woods and desert places he will strew leaves over 

 the friendless bodies of unburied men. 



But, it may be said, we have always had the black- 

 bird in Britain, a resident species, very common and 

 universally distributed — why does it not figure more 

 prominently in our old literature ? If this can be 

 taken as a test undoubtedly the blackbird comes a 

 long way after the nightingale, though this species 

 is known only in a portion of England, actually 

 less than a fourth part of the British area over which 

 the black ouzel with orange-tawny bill is a familiar 

 songster. It is, however, not a good test. The fact 

 that our older poets, including those of Scotland and 

 Wales, make much of the nightingale merely serves 

 to show that they were following a convention of 

 the continental poets, ancient and modern. 



Ireland is an exception, to judge from the transla- 

 tions of the very early Irish poetry made by Professor 



