90 



THE NATURAL HISTORY 



wing, is harsh and displeasing. These birds seem of a 

 pugnacious disposition ; for they sing with an erected crest 

 and attitudes of rivalry and defiance ; are shy and wild in 

 breeding-time, avoiding neighbourhoods, and haunting 

 lonely lanes and commons ; nay even the very tops of the 

 Sussex-downs, where there are bushes and covert ; but in 

 July and August they bring their broods into gardens and 

 orchards, and make great havoc among the summer- 

 fruits. 



The black-cap has in common a full, sweet, deep, loud, 

 and wild pipe ; yet that strain is of short continuance, and 

 his motions are desultory ; but when that bird sits calmly 

 and engages in song 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 an 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. 



Selborne parish alone can and has exhibited at times 

 more than half the birds that are ever seen in all Sweden ; 

 the former has produced more than one hundred and 

 twenty species, the latter only two hundred and twenty- 



