2QO Hoffmann, Summer Birds of the Rhine. [Oct. 



Club, and as I look back now to the excitement and delight which 

 accompanied the study of so many new birds, I trust that I can 

 share these pleasures in some degree with those whose recitals 

 of labors in other fields have so often interested me. 



In order to give a degree of coherence to the notes which I 

 have to present, I shall try to group them about the stream which 

 most travellers ascend for other study than that of its fauna, but 

 first I shall sketch briefly the characteristics of twelve or fifteen 

 birds which formed the staple diet, the daily food, so to speak, of 

 my field observations. These sketches are slight, as I have made 

 very little attempt to supplement my own notes by consulting the 

 books ; I hope, however, they will add a little color to the subse- 

 quent pages. 



Blackbird (Turdus meruld). 



When Bottom sings in the enchanted wood, 



" The ouzel-cock so black of hue 

 With orange-tawny bill, 

 The throstle with his note so true, 

 The wren with little quill," 



he enumerates the familiar songsters of England, and heads his list 

 with the Blackbird. From the time of Shakspeare the Blackbird, 

 the Wren, and the Redbreast are the familiar birds of English 

 literature, so that with the exception of the Lark, the Nightingale 

 and the Cuckoo, there were no birds I was more anxious to see. 

 July, however, is an even more inauspicious month in Europe 

 than here; so many of the birds are early breeders. The Cuckoo 

 and the Nightingale were silent, and to me invisible, and still 

 remain mere names. With the Blackbird or Black Thrush, as the 

 Germans call him. I was more fortunate. He was, if not so 

 numerous as our Robin, quite as ubiquitous, whistling from the 

 gardens and parks of the cities, and from the hillsides and glens of 

 the country. His length is the same as that of his cousin, our 

 Robin, and he suggests this bird in many ways. He has the same 

 way of running forward, and then drawing himself up, and he plants 

 his feet and pulls at an angle-worm in precisely the same way. He 

 scratches more in the leaves than our bird, showing in this his 



