98 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



are beginning to call themselves, who love a bird 

 only when they hold it in the hateful cage, the most 

 iniquitous of man's many inventions, have so far 

 neglected this thrush. All the images called up by 

 the redwing, the sight or sound or thought of him, 

 are of rural winter scenes, and are pleasing, especially 

 those of the evening gatherings of redwings in copse or 

 shrubbery ; for, like the linnet and starling, they 

 love to hold a kind of concert, or grand musical con- 

 fabulation or corroboree, in which all the birds chirp, 

 twitter and scream together before settling down to 

 sleep in the evergreens, which look black in the twilight 

 against the luminous evening sky. In my case there 

 are still other associations, for it happens that the 

 soft musical chirp of the redwing reminds me vividly 

 of other birds which have a sound resembling it, 

 birds that were dear to me in my boyhood and youth ; 

 one a true thrush, another the social military starling of 

 the grassy pampas and Patagonia. That dark bird 

 with the scarlet breast and beautiful voice was to me, 

 in winter time in that distant land, what the redwing 

 is to many an English boy. 



Now as I rested there against the pile of brushwood 

 on which he sat so near me he continued to emit these 

 soft low chirping notes or little drops of musical 

 sound ; and it seemed in part a questioning note, as 

 if he was asking me what I was ? Why I regarded 

 him so attentively ? What were my intentions to- 

 wards him ? And in part it was a soliloquy, and this 

 was how I interpreted what he appeared to be saying : 



