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Dr. A. G. Butler,



of the bird must be that of a Blackcap because of the song of the

male parent : by successfully handrearing one of the young I proved

that my identification of the nest was correct, much to my friend’s

surprise.


Handrearing wild birds is an excellent test of the character of

bird-utterances. Call-notes and notes of alarm, which are bird-

language as distinct from its song, are generally, probably invariably,

inherited ; although domestication sometimes adds considerably to

the number of notes of a similar character; but the song proper (in

the majority of cases I believe) is only learned by hearing a cock

bird of its own species singing during its upbringing ; if another kind

of musician performs regularly in its vicinity it will learn the song of

that bird in place of its natural one. Even a Skylark or Wagtail,

the songs of which are inherited, may introduce phrases from the

melodies of other performers near to them.


The same individual bird does not always repeat identically

the same song, as though it were a gramophone record : as I have

noted elsewhere my hen Hangnest sang nine utterly dissimilar songs,

giving the preference to two of them which were frequently uttered;

none of them was in the least like that of my old cock Hangnest;

moreover the love-song and the fighting-song (which I should think

would probably be similar to, if not identical with, that sung by the

hangnests and some other birds w r hen in great pain or terror) are not

alike. Before the war I obtained gramophone-records of the love-

song and the fighting-song of the Nightingale from Germany : * to

be sure they are both very inferior to the performances of the wild

bird, but they indicate the different character of the two, although

not quite correctly : the love-song should begin with the long-drawn

soft plaintive whistle repeated from four to nine times, which is

quite as characteristic of the bird as the water-bubble note,—the so-

called “jug-jug”: I have heard the Blackcap imitating the latter and

other of the notes of the more refined singer in the Kentish woods.


It is of course well known that caged wild birds frequently

pick up the notes of other birds in their vicinity: my old Hangnest

still occasionally utters the metallic chyang which it picked up from



* I wish I had waited until now, as the British branch of “ His Master’s Voice ’

now issues both on one disc at a considerably lower price (B- 390. Cat. No.)



