THE WHITE-THROAT. 



" Ah ! " thought he, " Some accident has happened to the white-throat. 

 A magpie or a weasel has run away with her eggs." 



He went hastily to the nest to look, when, to his joy, it was full of young 

 birds all newly hatched. And he found out that the mother had taken the 

 broken shell, and dropped it far away from her home, lest it should disclose 

 the beloved spot to some passer-by. 



The white-throat does not live in England in the winter. It comes 

 with the swallows, and loves the green lanes and hawthorn bushes of the deep 

 country. As soon as it comes it begins to warble a few sweet notes now and 

 then, and to flit about from bush to bush in a restless way. Sometimes it 

 flutters in the air, singing all the time, and then drops down again. 



As it sings, it swells out its throat, and puts up the feathers on its head. 

 And though it is a small, slender bird, yet this habit makes it look rather 

 stout. Its plumage is very soft, and of a brown kind of red ; and the throat 

 is pure white, from whence it has its name. When it comes in the spring, it 

 has just put on its summer suit ; but by the end of the season the colours 

 fade, and the tail feathers get very ragged. 



The white-throat has several relations. One is called the garden warbler, 

 and is not quite so familiar. Its song is sweet and mellow, and it warbles 

 as it threads its way round the trunks of trees in the copse, or through the 

 brakes and bushes. It has several notes, and some of them remind one of 

 the blackbird, only that they are sung more hurriedly. It lives in thick 

 hedges, and makes a nest like that of its relative, only it puts a little moss 

 outside. It has also the same love of fruit, and comes to the gardens when 

 the strawberries and the currants are ripe. But though it cannot resist any 

 kind of fruit, it is still a welcome visitor ; for it is the only one of the family 

 that will feed on the troublesome caterpillar that lives on the cabbage, and 

 does so much mischief. It is but just to set one fact against the other. 



It has been seen darting into the air to catch insects, after the fashion of 

 the fly-catcbcrs. It sometimes takes its stand on some post, or stake that 

 has been put to a dahlia plant, and" watches for its prey. When an insect 

 comes by, it darts with its bill upwards, catches the fly in a second, and goes 

 back to its post. 



