TURDUS MERULA. 271 



Jet bright wing ! jet bright wing ! 

 Flit across the sunset glade, 

 Lying there in wait to sing, 

 Listen with thy head away, 

 Keeping time with twinkling eye, 

 While from all the woodland glade 

 Birds of every plume and note 



Strain the throat 

 Till both hill and valley ring, 

 And the warbled minstrelsy, 

 Ebbing, flowing like the sea, 

 Claims brief interludes for thee ; 

 Then, with simple swell and fall, 

 Breaking beautifully through all, 

 Let thy Pan-like pipe repeat — 



Feiu notes, but sweet." 



Montgomery is perfectly correct, ior I have heard the black- 

 bird's whistle from " the peep of day" till " the moon dropped 

 down the west," and " across the sunset glade." He is also an 

 early songster — hence an early breeder. From my notes I have 

 heard his love-whistle at dawn of a winter's morning, and 

 also when the street lamps were lit at night. And in spring he 

 whistles or sins;s at all times and in all weather. One note will 

 suffice : — " — April 9th, 1856. Although this day has been very 

 cold, dull, and rainy throughout, yet it did not keep the black- 

 bird ^silent. One whistled lovely at three p.m. when raining 

 heavy, and at eight o'clock at night I heard one in a garden at 

 Greenside Place, and one in my own garden about the same 

 time, proving that the blackbird tunes his mellow pipe in all 

 weather, from dawn till dusk at this time of the year, for the 

 street lamps were lighted, and it was pouring with rain while 

 he whistled." Another note in "May 27th, 1858. On this 

 rainy night at dusk I heard a blackbird whistling on an old elm 

 tree, almost hidden by the branches ; he was vociferously and 

 continuously answering another one equally loud, which was 

 sitting somewhere down the Pends, both of them keeping up the 

 concert till nearly dark." So it might also, as well as the mavis, 

 be called the Scottish nightingale to be thus whistling within 

 the verge of night — a time which Burns calls the time of love, 

 for he says in his political skit, " The Fete Champetre" — 



" When love and beauty heard the news 



The gay greenwoods amang, man, 

 Where, gathering flowers and busking bowers, 



They heard the blackbird's sang, man ; 

 A vow — they sealed it wi' a kiss, 



Sir Politics to fetter, 

 As theirs alone, the patent bliss 



To hold a Fete Champetre." 



