ALARM-NOTES 27 



W. H. Hudson has recorded the discrimination of 

 the birds in the La Plata region, where the various 

 hawks and falcons " have just as much respect 

 paid to them as their strength and daring entitle 

 them to, and no more" (Naturalist in La Plata, 



p. 83). 



Various incidents have been recorded which seem 

 to suggest the relation of cries to the presence of 

 particular enemies. In Traite de la Faiiconnerie 

 (by Prof Schlegel), p. 44, is the following: "The 

 signs of alarm which the shrike (Z. excubitor) gives 

 vary infinitely, not only according to the species of 

 bird of prey which appears, but also according to 

 the mode by which it approaches — whether slow or 

 quickly, gliding over the ground, or soaring aloft, 

 and so on." 



The writer of this observation refers to a caged 

 shrike kept to announce the arrival of a hawk in the 

 vicinity of the trapper. My own experience has 

 been sufficient to enable me to generally gather 

 from the alarm-cries of birds a fairly correct impres- 

 sion of the nature of the enemies they announce. 

 I know well that when house-sparrows utter loudly 

 the most vehement alarm of the species — a sound 

 resembling that of tourr — the birds are greatly 

 afraid of some other bird, and that probably a hawk 



