ii6 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



in earnest, he pours forth very sweet, but inward melody, and 

 expresses great variety of soft and gentle modulations, superior 

 perhaps to those of any of our warblers, the nightingale excepted. 



Black-caps mostly haunt orchards and gardens; while they 

 warble their throats are wonderfully distended. 



The song of the redstart is superior, though somewhat like that 

 of the white-throat -, some birds have a few more notes than others. 

 Sitting very placidly on the top of a tall tree in a village, the cock 

 sings from morning to night : he affects neighbourhoods, and 



avoids solitude, and loves to build in orchards and about houses ; 

 with us he perches on the vane of a tall maypole. 



The fly-catcher is of all our summer birds the most mute and 

 the most familiar; it also appears the last of any. It builds in a 

 vine, or a sweetbriar, against the wall of a house, or in the hole of 

 a wall, or on the end of a beam or plate, and often close to the 

 post of a door where people are going in and out all day long. 

 This bird does not make the least pretension to song, but uses a 

 little inward wailing note when it thinks its young in danger from 

 cats or other annoyances ; it breeds but once, and retires early. 



