98 



SPRING 



nightingales is a long, deep note lasting for several seconds 

 — it sounds like half a minute — and steadily crescendo. It 

 has a positively startling effect, interrupting, as it seems, 

 the previous flow of song ; and we know of no other bird 

 except the woodlark which has this power of dwelling 

 on a long note with increasing 

 s/l^MiZtZr. emphasis. 



The blackbird's song is strictly 

 intermediate between the flowing 

 and formal types. There is a 

 most characteristic run of six 

 notes, four rising and then two 

 falling, which is almost as fixed 

 as many phrases of the song- 

 thrush and nightingale ; but the 

 lazy ouzel does not always care to 

 sing them, or plays all kinds of 

 golden tricks with them, so that 

 they become something different, 

 or blend into a free run of song. 

 Blackbirds in May have an effort- 

 less mastery of music which 

 makes the goldfinch seem fussy, 

 the skylark tiresome, and the 

 song-thrush peevishly anxious. Such comparisons are felt to 

 be ungrateful, when we remember how bravely and sweetly 

 the lark and thrush sang in February or November, when the 

 blackbird would not try, and how busily the goldfinch will 

 cry on among the swart August leaves in the heavy silence. 

 But if fruition is better than hope, then the blackbird's enjoy- 

 ment of spring is better than the thrush's prediction of it. In 

 May nature lives for the time, and the blackbird knows the 

 maxim carpe diem too well to labour it in his song. 



NIGHTINGALE 



