often I found difficulty in telling the song of one from the song of the other, 

 especially if I heard only two or three notes. 



The larks were, of course, exceedingly attractive. It was fascinating to see 

 them spring from the grass, circle upwards, steadily singing and soaring for 

 several minutes, and then return to the point whence they had started. As my 

 companion pointed out, they exactly fulfilled Wordsworth's description ; they 

 soared but did not roam. It is quite impossible wholly to differentiate a bird's 

 voice from its habits and surroundings. Although in the lark's song there are 

 occasional musical notes, the song as a whole is not very musical, but it is so 

 joyous, buoyant, and unbroken, and uttered under such conditions, as fully to 

 entitle the bird to the place he occupies with both poet and prose writer. 



The most musical singer we heard was the blackcap warbler. To my ear its 

 song seemed more musical than that of the nightingale. It was astonishingly 

 powerful for so small a bird ; in volume and continuity it does not come up to the 

 songs of the thrushes and of certain other birds, but in quality, as an isolated 

 bit of melody, it can hardly be surpassed. 



Among the minor singers the robin was noticeable. We all know this pretty 

 little bird from the books, and I was prepared to find him as 'friendly and attrac- 

 tive as he proved to be, but I had not realized how well he sang. It is not a loud 

 song, but very musical and attractive, and the bird is said to sing practically all 

 through the year. The song of the w^ren interested me much, because it was 

 not in the least like that of our house wren, but, on the contrary, like that of our 

 winter wren. The theme is the same as the winter wren's, but the song did not 

 seem to me to be as brilliantly musical as that of the tiny singer of the North 

 Woods. The sedge warbler sang in the thick reeds a mocking ventriloquial lay, 

 which reminded me at times of the less pronounced parts of our yellow-breasted 

 chat's song. The cuckoo's cry was singularly attractive and musical, far more so 

 than the rolling, many times repeated note of our rain-crow. 



We did not reach the inn at Brockenhurst until about nine o'clock, just at 

 nightfall, and a few minutes before that we heard a night-jar. It did not sound 

 in the least like either our whippoorwill or our night-hawk, uttering a long-con- 

 tinued call of one or two syllables, repeated over and over. The chaffinch was 

 very much in evidence, continually chaunting its unimportant little ditty. I was 

 pleased to see the bold, masterful missel thrush, the stormcock as it is often called; 

 but this bird breeds and sings in the early spring, when the weather is still tem- 

 pestuous, and had long been silent when we saw it. The starlings, rooks, and 

 jackdaws did not sing, and their calls were attractive merely as the calls of our 

 grackles are attractive; and the other birds that we heard sing, though they 

 played their part in the general chorus, were performers of no especial note, like 

 our tree-creepers, pine warblers, and chi])ping-sparr(iws. The great spring chorus 

 hnd already begun to subside, but the woods and licjils were still vocal with 

 beautiful bird music, the c^>untry wa^^ very lovely, the inn as c(imfortahle as 



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