94 SPRING 



that vies with the grasshopper-warbler in the evening sun- 

 shine, or the nightingale's music that overrides the corncrake 

 and nightjar when dusk has fallen. 



Besides the chaffinch and blue-tit, the yellowhammer, 

 willow-wren, hedge-sparrow, and all the pipits have well- 

 marked formal songs. Between them, they carry this type 

 of music from the heart of the copses and gardens to the bare 

 moors and mountains and spray-dashed ocean crags, where 

 the meadow-pipits and rock-pipits nest. The chaffinch's song 

 makes up a great part of the whole May chorus, and when 

 we analyse the volume of sound on some warm May morning, 

 and credit each strain to its singer, we realise how abundant 

 a bird the chaffinch is. Even among all the babel of May, 

 their voices are constantly dominant, and they add much to 

 its gaiety. For sheer sunny cheerfulness, the song of the 

 chaffinch cannot be excelled. Cheerfulness is supreme in the 

 skylark's music, pouring from the sky ; but there is some- 

 thing curiously vague and indistinctive about it, and the 

 chaffinch's song seems to be far more expressive of earthly 

 spring. The stream of skylark music suits best the vast 

 spaces of bare down or moor, when it falls around us, as all- 

 pervading and impersonal as the sunshine ; but chaffinches 

 are attached to special trees in the garden, and have a sense 

 of home, like man, that gives a more human quality to their 

 music. The blue-tit's is one of the quieter springvoices, like the 

 willow-wren's ; and as the blue-tit is a good deal less abundant 

 once May has begun, it is apt to be regarded as exclusively a 

 singer of early spring. The hedge-sparrow sings on persis- 

 tently over his second nest ; his ditty is cheerful enough, but 

 does not run with the easy sweetness of the chaffinch's. Its 

 formal pattern is sometimes almost disguised, and the song 

 then seems as freely flowing as that of the wren, though always 

 of a fixed length. The yellowhammer's song is distinctly 



