Rock Thrushes 69 



occasions only, and only for his master. Then he 

 stretches up his head, compressing the feathers of it 

 until it looks almost snake-like, droops his wings as 

 he tightens down his body, and spreads his redstart 

 tail into a quivering chestnut fan. Low warblings, 

 far down in the throat, commence ; piano — piano ; the 

 notes trembling in time with his body, and gradually 

 coming to crescendo, to die back again into a far 

 distant tone. 



He jumps off his perch on to the sand, the music 

 poured forth passionately all the time, as he runs 

 quickly up and down, his throat uplifted, and his fan 

 tail tremulous with the strength of his song — a song 

 that sounds like rippling water. 



No doubt it is the manner in which he serenades 

 and courts his fiancee — his promessa sposa — as he trips 

 round her, amongst the gentians and the roses des alpes 

 of his summer haunts. 



Five minutes afterwards he will be himself again, 

 so to speak : puffing out those tightened feathers ; back 

 again from his dreamt-of wife ; and whistling some 

 artificial stanza that he has picked up from me. 



It was at the finale of one of these ecstatic love 

 songs that he escaped through the window into the 

 garden of the little Suffolk rectory that was then 

 our home — his and mine. I opened his cage-door 

 as he was singing — for he constantly comes out for a 

 fly in the room — but he seemed for once to lose his 

 head. 



Suddenly, without a moment's warning, even as 

 his rapid warblings were still uttered, he darted like 



