240 SUMMER 



like the chestnuts, though in a less obvious degree. It is 

 common knowledge, thanks to Tennyson, even to the urban 

 mind, that ' in the spring a livelier iris changes on the 

 burnished dove,' the dove in this case being the wood- 

 pigeon of the variety that struts and coos in the parks. 

 But none of Tennyson's illustrations — not the crested lap- 

 wing, nor the red robin, nor the prismatic pigeon — change 

 more notably than the cock-sparrow. By the time he begins 

 carrying straws in the spring and fussing about the untidy 

 lumps in the trees that he uses for nest, he has changed from 

 a dull brown bird, scarcely more conspicuous than his sober 

 mate, into a gorgeously liveried creature. The washy dabs 

 of dark colour on his throat have grown and brightened into 

 a deep black, most finely and conspicuously denoting his sex. 

 He has not moulted in the proper sense, though there are 

 birds which moult twice and even three times in the year, but 

 has rubbed off the protective nap which hid his native colour. 

 By such process does the chaffinch and others, too, make 

 themselves glitter finely in the spring. But the livery does 

 not keep its salient freshness very long. As summer 

 advances, the cock-sparrow that had been 'peacocking' in 

 gorgeous superiority to his mate steadily sobers down till 

 the difference, though obvious, is not striking, and neither 

 is very much superior in looks. Such a blurring is quite 

 visible even to the casual eye on the cock-starling, and to a 

 less extent on the pigeons. 



When the change begins to come over these birds they 

 do not conspicuously lose vitality, as birds do in the moult, 

 though they and all birds show a diminution of energy when 

 summer succeeds to spring. A more thorough and over- 

 whelming experience befalls a bird which also may often be 

 watched in towns more easily than in the wilds of nature. 

 The mallard, or male wild duck, is the outstanding example 



