224 PERSONALITY IN BIRDS 



first and second groups ; by its habit of feeding on 

 the ground, and its gestures when so employed, it 

 shows its affinity to Redstart and Robin, as well as 

 to the groups of the Thrushes and of the Chats, in 

 which these features are so uniform and striking. 

 The quick hopping gait, the sudden halt, the erect 

 attitude and fixed gaze, are not less typical of the 

 Nightingale, Redstart, and Robin, the Chats and the 

 true Thrushes, than is the fundamental similarity of 

 song in all of them saving the Nightingale alone. 

 For, in the matter of song, the Nightingale knits up 

 in its own person the characteristics of widely 

 separated singers. On the one hand it retains the 

 perfect utterance of some of the small Warblers ; on 

 the other it possesses some of the full-bodied tone of 

 the Thrushes, though without their broken phrases 

 and occasionally abortive, squealing notes. Its 

 supreme quality, however, is its expression- 

 expression in the more restricted, but deeper sense 

 the term has acquired in musical usage. The 

 songs of many birds are expressive in a more 

 general sense of buoyant gladness in the Larks; 

 of almost aggressive ebulliency in the Chaffinch ; of 

 sheer dominance of force in the wild whistlings of 

 the Throstles ; of self-gratulatory ease in the Black- 

 bird. But, numerous and varied as are the songs 

 that seem in other birds to express moods as varied, 

 there are, beside that of the Nightingale, two only 

 that are delivered with expression in its deeper sense 

 the song of the Willow-warbler, especially, as it 

 seems to me, when it begins to fail with the failing 

 year ; and that of the Robin, also particularly when 

 in winter he perches, still and solitary, and with set 



