IvANGUAGE OF BIRDS 



tion of their meaning, but this is only partly true. 

 A parrot will say ' ' Go away " to a person it 

 dislikes, and its ruffled plumes and menacing bill 

 will emphasise its words. Compare this with 

 the soft, almost pleading intonation " Come to 

 Polly," addressed to a member of the family who 

 stands in favour. 



To a great number of the varying sounds in 

 Nature, to the invitation of the grouse, the warn- 

 ing note of the swallow, the indignant cry of tern 

 and lapwing, to name a few examples, words might 

 be fitted without difficulty, when the rudiments 

 of an intelligible language would be seen to exist. 



But hitherto we have been dealing with what 

 may be taken to be the common-places of avian 

 speech. It is when we come to the song of birds 

 — to the glorious outburst of the lark, the deep, 

 low, purposeful notes of the nightingale — that a 

 wider question arises. Here are the expressions 

 of an intenser feeling, of a more subtle intuition, 

 it may be, than any words that man has yet de- 

 vised are capable of conveying. Rest in a 

 meadow at daybreak, when the first sun-shafts 

 lighten a new world of emerald green and cloud- 

 less blue. Picture yourself steadily rising, without 

 effort or fear, nearer and nearer to the very gates 

 of gold. Realise the thoughts and feelings which 

 would surge through your whole being as you 

 seemed to shake off the atmosphere of earth at 

 every beat of your tireless wings, and you may get 

 some inkling of the source of inspiration and of 

 the meaning of the lark's song. In his "Ode to 

 the Nightingale," Keats may be accused of being 

 fanciful. The bird may not be lamenting a 

 world — 



" Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin, and dies 

 Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes." 



But plainly something — some deep, strange 



91 



