14 WILD LIFE OF SCOTLAND 



chirpy scream is the last sound heard, before silence 

 falls over the plains, and the trees of the wood go 

 to sleep. 



Meantime the chaffinch, or shilfa has been calling 

 " finch, finch," as it has been rendered ; from 

 which, the whole group to which he belongs has 

 got the name of finches. 



But, much more musical is the Scots " dreep, 

 dreep, weet, weet " ; and with much more meaning, 

 seeing that it is uttered at the showering, and 

 growing time of the year, when the soft rain wets 

 the leaves, " weet, weet"; and, gathering into drops, 

 drips down on the blue hyacinths, and pink and 

 white anemones, " dreep, dreep." 



These calls of birds seem to belong to the wood- 

 lands, where mates are apt to lose each other in 

 the labyrinth of branches. They are something 

 apart from the song, and have quite another 

 mission. They are meant not to please, but to 

 summon ; or to tell where the caller is when he is 

 wanted. " I am in the beech-tree," they seem to 

 say ; or " I have changed my position to the elm." 

 Nothing strikes observers in treeless landscapes 

 more than their absence. 



In some such order,, appear our resident songsters. 

 They overlap one another, of course. By the middle 



