GARDEN WARBLEE. 127 



when scared from tlie laurels, and a note peculiar to the 

 breeding season, which, though differing in almost every 

 species, yet in each denotes anxiety as we approach 

 their haunts, and conveys no doubt a timely caution 

 to the objects of their care. Mr. Blyth, to whose 

 valuable communications to the ^"^ Field Naturalist" 

 I have before alluded, in his remarks on "British 

 Birds of the Eobin kind," (vol. i., p. 434), thus 

 endeavours to render in words the sounds emitted 

 by some of our more familiar species when tending their 

 young ; although these again are perfectly distinct from 

 the sweet guttural tones indulged in by many, when feed- 

 ing or caressing their nestlings, and unconscious of the 

 close propinquity of any human being. ^^ The peculiar 

 double note (says Mr. Blyth) which all the species utter 

 when a person is near their nest is worthy of being 

 noticed ; this in the nightingale may be expressed by 

 hweep ; hweep, carre : in the redstart by hweet, tit, tit, 

 tit; hweet, tit, tit: in the robin, by a loud tit tit tit; 

 and now and then a long drawa plaintive note (between 

 a whistle and a hiss), which cannot be expressed in 

 writing : the stonechat's note resembles hweet, jur, jur ; 

 hiveet, jur : the whinchat's is yeer, tip ; yeer, tip, tip : 

 and the wheatear also has a note analagous, but which I 

 cannot accurately express in vrriting from mere memory. 

 The common grey flycatcher has a note of this kind, 

 which may be tolerably expressed by ist, chit ; ist, chit, 

 chit" The singularly happy rendering of most of the 

 above notes will be admitted, I am sm-e, by all who 

 have studied them in garden or grove, and many others 

 might be added amongst our summer warblers ; yet even 

 an old observer will hot unfrequently find himself at 

 fault, when tracing a sound, apparently new to him, to 

 some familiar form amidst the foliage of the trees in 

 summer. The titmice, with rather a series of call notes 

 than any real song, have a liiss to greet the birds- 



