68 ODD HOURS WITH NATURE 



her day came, too. It may have been a mere 

 glint of wintry sunshine on his glossy wing or 

 the set of his wonderful waxy bill. Something, 

 at any rate, has happened, and if the little chases 

 are stopped she feels neglected ; if directed at 

 another bird she feels an intolerable sense of wrong, 

 which is promptly gratified in a fierce feminine 

 fight and a scolding which disturbs a whole 

 shrubbery. All the birds of the thrush family fall in 

 love betimes. The song-thrushes were courting in 

 the hard frost of a fortnight since, and the queer 

 antics of the missel-thrushes have now for many 

 days been working o'ut the prologue of the summer 

 comedy. Anthropologists tell us that marriage 

 by capture was once a universal practice among 

 mankind, and that traces of it continue in some 

 marriage rituals and in some children's games. 

 One might almost suppose that time was when the 

 missel-thrush took a wife in this way too, and that 

 he pretends to do it still. His courtship is a chase 

 with something in it of the formality of ritual. 

 A wire fence may be the scene of it. There the 

 birds hop swiftly from post to post, the male 

 alighting on one top precisely at the moment the 

 hen alights on the next ahead, the pursuer uttering 

 a very curious and rapid clucking note all the 

 while. The whole performance is ridiculous, and 

 so from time to time the performers think, for 

 every now and then, " coming to themselves," they 

 abandon it precipitately, and zealously search for 

 worms like sensible birds, subject to an unaccount- 

 able aberration. 



Of course, there is excellent reason for birds 



