156 A. S. VEKET NOTES ON BIRDS 



encouraging him to further valour. Now retiring, the battle again 

 rages, until at length the victor is proclaimed, the award is made, 

 and the vanquished fly off, apparently as self-satisfied as sparrows 

 can be. And the reason for the battle was, as I have said, the 

 observance of one of Nature's laws, — the selection and survival 

 of the fittest. 



Courtship is to be studied in Birdland. Out in the field, and 

 perched upon a rail-fence, a rook with tail expanded is propelling 

 himself painfully to and fro, and as now and again he gives vent 

 to low and laboured groans, one might imagine him to be in the 

 throes of immediate dissolution. Yet there is meaning in his 

 behaviour : he is striving to attain an object ; for, ludicrous as it 

 all appears to us, grace and attraction are evinced in every antic, 

 poetry and music also in those weird utterances, passing sweet and 

 full of import to the dusky lady sitting arbitrative upon his fate. 

 And soon his reward comes to him ; love, the gauge thrown down, 

 and love as quickly taken up again. Then away he flies with his 

 bride to the tree top whereon his nest will be rudely swayed, and 

 for cradle-song the wild, hard wind of spring will shriek a lullaby, 

 fit rearing-place for his hardy brood. 



And pathos is to be met with in Birdland. Yearly, when I am 

 gathering strawberries in my garden, just in front of me a fragile 

 feathered form flutters timorously from her nest under one of the 

 plants, and then, scarcely out of reach, flits around me on the 

 ground, as, with palpitating breast and plaintive cry, she upturns 

 her eyes beseechingly to mine, hoping, yet gravely doubting, that 

 the shrine of her affections may escape unravished. 



Birdland, in these and many other interesting aspects, may be 

 profitably studied at Heronsgate, near Rickmans worth. The fol- 

 lowing are a few observations which I have made on the habits of 

 some of the more familiar birds which frequent this neighbourhood. 

 The Whitetheoat {Sylvia cinerea). — I was very much interested 

 last summer in the beliaviour of a whitothroat, and could but 

 regard it as an instance of protective mimicry. I had found her 

 nest with eggs, and stooped over it, watching the bird as it glided 

 off into the surrounding brambles. Then, and all at once, she 

 adopted the motions of a dormouse, and so admirably did she play 

 the role that — aided, as naturally she was, by the dense brush — 

 had I not known it to be the bird, it would have been diflicult 

 indeed to determine it to be anything bxit a mouse. Never for 

 a moment still, but gliding swiftly along the branches and twigs 

 after the manner of the animal, she made no use whatever of her 

 wings, which were kept closely pressed to the body, but, when 

 arrived at the end of one twig, she would spring to another in a 

 perfectly mouse-like way. Yery often she was quite close to me, 

 yet her movements were so rapid and confusing to the eye, and 

 the part she had elected to play Avas so cleverly performed, that 

 at any other time the deception might well have been complete. 



The Grasshopper- Warblek(Zocms^i9//« ncevia). — The grasshopper- 

 warbler, a distant relative of the Dartford warbler of our southern 



