IN PAIRING TIME 133 



cut aside and forsook her. That cackle possibly cost 

 her her chance in life. One does not care to have 

 one's fine rapture rudely broken in upon by the 

 practical cackle of even a well-meaning female. 



I have described elsewhere (" Birds by Land and 

 Sea") at some length the courtship of the Ring- 

 ousel, and those who have witnessed the courtship 

 of both this bird and the Blackbird will have noted 

 the similarity of the subdued prattling used by both, 

 a performance quite unlike the song of either. 



I have found the courtship of the Song-thrush a 

 strangely unimaginative affair. As a rule it is carried 

 on in the early morning at the bottom of ditchways 

 running beside hedgerows, and one may put up a 

 string of half-a-dozen of these birds at once. No 

 doubt they have, besides the mere striking of 

 attitudes, certain masonic signs unintelligible to 

 us ; but, beyond struttings and posings, and a feeble 

 show of pugnacity when two rivals rise together for 

 a moment like bickering Starlings, I have found 

 nothing of moment to record. 



Observing the fine ecstasy with which a Throstle 

 delivers himself in song, one might be disposed 

 to credit him with something more distinctive 

 than the perfunctory, forthright manner in which he 

 takes a mate. But musical faculty in birds, as in 

 men, is not necessarily allied with any mental or 

 moral excellence ; indeed, it seems often to preclude 

 it. In no birds is the merely natural act of pairing 

 so immediate and direct as among song-birds ; whilst 

 those that interpose displays and ceremonies, and are 

 retarded by keen rivalries and contentions, are rarely 

 birds of song, but such as the Crow, Snipe, and 



