34 



Bird Notes and News 



enlivened us we believed them gay and 

 happy. We deceived ourselves. What we 

 took for joyous songs were bravuras of 

 revolt and canticles of lament. These twit- 

 ters, these roulades, these trills, these pearly 

 notes, were but a thousand signs of courage, 

 the persistent illusion of coming deliverance. 

 In singing, always singing, the captive birds 

 were, I discovered, grieving, even dying of 

 grief, while the more they sang the more we 

 enjoyed and wrongly interpreted their melo- 

 dies. Doubtless, to our dull and careless 

 hearing, there is little difference between 

 the song of the free and of the imprisoned 

 bird. The same words, the same notes, 

 the same movements can express feelings 

 the most diverse to the ear that truly hears. 

 I now know what the bird is singing in the 

 little wired box, when others imagine his 

 throat to be bursting with joy. Whatever 

 his notes, to those who understand he 

 moans, pleads, accuses, but never accepts 

 his fate. The finest song is the more perfect 



form of protest. To sing is the being of 

 the bird, his only manner of expressing him- 

 self ; if he can command but one poor tiny 

 note he will use it indefinitely, to signify 

 everything, as he perches on the stupid 

 rounded stick which is not a bough. 



Alas ! the restless cage-bird. Lively and 

 charming though he may be, he is a luckless 

 creature whose distress we cannot gauge. 

 Let us put ourselves in his place for a 

 moment, in that nairow coop where his use- 

 less wings flutter, and thence let us view 

 the wide world, the open window letting in 

 waves of light and air, beyond which is the 

 unbarred limitless sky, the great ocean in 

 which the swallows sail and all the free 

 birds flit and soar and glide. The caged 

 bird will remain to the end of his cramped 

 palpitating life in the coffin of wood and 

 wire, alone, helpless, desolate. He sends 

 out his little despairing spirit to the four 

 corners of the earth, to the air, to the sk3^ 

 He sings ! 



Mr. Roosevelt and Eno^lish Birds. 



The late ex-President Theodore Roosevelt 

 was, as is well laiown, an enthusiastic pro- 

 tector of wild life, although a prominent 

 big-game hunter. He was especially inter- 

 ested in birds and their preservation, and 

 during his presidency created fifty-three 

 Federal bird sanctuaries and a gieat number 

 of national game reserves. It will be remem- 

 bered that during his visit to England a 

 few years ago he visited the New Forest in 

 company with Viscount (then Sir Edward) 

 Grey, in order to become acquainted with 

 the song-birds of England. In his auto- 

 biography he gives some of his impressions. 

 He wrote : 



" The bird that most impressed m© was the 

 Bleickbird. I had already heard Nightingales in 

 abundance near Lake Como, and had also listened 

 to Larks, but I had never heard the Blackbird, 

 the Song Thrush, or the Blackcap Warbler, and 

 I did not know what really beautiful singers they 

 were. Blackbirds were very abundant, and they 

 played a prominent part in that chorus which we 

 heard throughout the day on every hand, though 

 perhaps loudest the following morning at dawn. 

 In its habits and manners the Blackbird strikingly 

 resembles the American Robin, and indeed looks 

 exactly like a Robin with a yellow bill and coal- 

 blnck plumage. Its song has a general resemblance 

 to that of our Robin, but many of the notes are 



far more musical, more like those of ovir Wood- 

 Thrush ; and the highest possible praise for any 

 song-bird is to liken its song to that of the Wood- 

 Thrush or Hermit-Thrush. 



" I certainly do not think that the Blackbird 

 has received full justice in the books. I knew 

 that he was a singer, but I really had no idea how 

 fine a singer. . .It is a fine thing for England to 

 have such an asset of the countryside, a bird so 

 common, so much in evidence, so fearless and 

 such a really beautiful singer." 



Of the Blackcap Mr. Roosevelt wrote : 

 " The most musical singer we heard was the 

 Blackcap. To my ear its song seemed more musical 

 than that of the Nightingale. It was astonishingly 

 powerful for so small a bird ; in volume and con- 

 tinuity it does not come up to the songs of the 

 Thrushes and of certain other birds, but in quality, 

 as an isolated bit of melody, it can hardly be sur- 

 passed." 



And of the Robin : 



" Among the minor singers the Robin was notice- 

 able. I was prepared to find him as friendly and 

 attractive as he proved to be, but I had not realised 

 how well he sang. It is not a loud song, but very 

 musical and attractive." 



In observing the birds of the Itchen vaUey 

 in Hampshire, the ex-President was struck 

 by the number of large wild birds to be seen 

 — "such large birds as Coots, Waterhens, 

 Grebes, Tufted Ducks, Pigeons, and Peewits." 



