148 TJie Blackbird's Song. 



twelve when the heat increases, he leaves the low 

 thick bushes and moist ditches and mounts up into 

 an oak tree, where, on a branch, he sits and sings. 

 Then another at a distance takes up the burden, till 

 by-aud-by, as you listen, partly hidden in a gateway, 

 four or five are thus engaged in the trees of a single 

 meadow. 



He sings in a quiet, leisurely way, as a great artist 

 should there is no haste, no notes thickening on 

 notes in swift crescendo. His voice (so to speak) 

 drops from him, without an effort, and is so clear 

 that it ma} r be heard at a long distance. It is not 

 a set song ; perhaps, in strict language, it is hardly 

 a song at all, but rather a succession of detached 

 notes with intervals between. Except when sing- 

 ing, the blackbird does not often frequent trees ; 

 he is a hedge-bird, though sometimes when you are 

 looking at a field of green corn or 'beans one will 

 rise out of it and fly to a tree a solitary tree such 

 as is sometimes seen in the midst of an arable field. 

 At Wick Farm, sitting in the cool parlor, or in the 

 garden under the shade of the trees, you may hear 

 him almost every morning in the meadows that come 

 right up to the orchard hedge. That hedge is his 

 favorite approach to the garden : he flies to it first, 

 and gradually works his way along under cover till 

 nearer the cultivated beds. Both blackbird and 

 thrush are particularly fond of visiting a patch of 

 cabbages in a shady, quiet corner: there are gen- 

 erally two or three there after the worms and cater- 

 pillars, and so forth. 



The thrushes build in the garden in several places, 

 especially in an iv3 r -hidden arbor a wooden frame 



