116 BRITISH BIRDS. 



Another must, however, be considered as giving a 

 better description, inasmuch as the writer appears to be 

 the companion of this early bird, thus securing not only 

 the pleasure of its song, but the many advantages never 

 known to those who indulge in long and injurious 

 slumbers : — 



" Sweetest -warbler of the skies, 

 Soon as morning's purple dyes 

 O'er the easteni mountains float, 

 'Weakened by thy merry note, 

 Through the fields of yellow corn 

 That Mersey's winding banks adorn, 

 O'er green meads I gaily pass, 

 And lightly brush the dewy grass." 



Birds, like other animals, sometimes display a feeling 

 of tenderness towards the young of other birds, of which 

 the following is an interesting instance. A young hen- 

 bird was brought to a naturalist in the month of May, 

 which was not able to feed without assistance. He 

 caused her, he says, to be attended to, and she was 

 hardly fledged when he received from another place a 

 nest of three or four unfledged sky-larks. She became 

 much attached to these new-comers, which were scarcely 

 younger than herself; she attended them night and day, 

 cherished them beneath her wings, and fed them with 

 her bill. 



Nothing could interrupt her offices of tenderness. If- 



