BIRDS AND BIRDS. 151 



I would not imply that our birds are the better 

 songsters ; but that their songs, if briefer and fee- 

 bler, are also more wild and plaintive, in fact, that 

 they are softer-voiced. The British birds, as I have 

 stated, are more domestic than ours ; a much larger 

 number build about houses and towers and out-build- 

 ings. The titmouse with us is exclusively a wood- 

 bird ; but in Britain three or four species of them 

 resort more or less to buildings in winter. Their red- 

 start also builds under the eaves of houses ; their 

 starling in church steeples and in holes in walls ; 

 several thrushes resort to sheds to nest, and jackdaws 

 breed in the crannies of the old architecture, and this 

 in a much milder climate than our own. 



They have in that country no birds that answer to 

 our tiny lisping wood-warblers genus Dendroica, 

 nor to our vireos, Vireonidce. On the other hand, 

 they have a larger number of field-birds and semi- 

 game birds. They have several species like our 

 robin ; thrushes like him and some of them larger, as 

 the ring-ouzel, the missel-thrush, the field-fare, the 

 throstle, the red-wing, White's thrush, the blackbird, 

 these, besides several species in size and habits 

 more like our wood-thrush. 



Several species of European birds sing at night 

 besides the true nightingale not fitfully and as if 

 in their dreams, as do a few of our birds, but con- 

 tinuously. They make a business of it. The sedge- 

 bird ceases at times as if from very weariness ; but 

 wake the bird up, says White, by throwing a stick 



