BIRO MUSIC 147 



he utters when perched; in form, or shape only it was 

 the same, the notes issuing in the same order, but lower, 

 infinitely sweeter, tender, ethcrcalised. The song ended 

 as the bird dropped lightly by the side of its little mate. 



I could hardly credit my own senses, so beautiful 

 had seemed this subdued lyric from a songster we regard 

 as very inferior to some of the warblers in delicacy and 

 expressiveness. 



On another (xrcasion I was walking across a furze- 

 grown common after dark on a very cold windy evening 

 in early April when at a distance of about forty yards 

 from me a whinchat warbled the fullest, sweetest song 

 I ever listened to from that bird. After a brief interval 

 the song was repeated, then once again. Whether it was 

 the exceeding purity of the sound, so clear, so won- 

 drously sweet, so unexpected at that hour, or the dark- 

 ness and silence of that solitary place which gave it 

 an almost preternatural beauty I cannot say, but the 

 effect on me was so great that I have never walked by 

 night in spring in any furzy place without pausing and 

 listening from time to time with the pleased expectation 

 of hearing it again. 



Probably in these two instances and in a dozen others 

 which I could cite the song was uttered liy chance at 

 the precise moment when it would be most impressive 

 — when the conditions and the mood they had induced 

 were most favourable. But the sound too may create 

 the mood, as was the case in the following instance. 



I have heard many wonderful blackbirds, for like all 

 songsters, feathered as well as human, they var>' greatly 



