GARDEN WARBLER. 127 



when scared from the laurels, and a note peculiar to the 

 breeding season, which, though differing in almost every 

 species, yet in each denotes anxiety as we approach 

 their haunts, and conveys no doubt a timely caution 

 to the objects of their care. Mr. Blyth, to whose 

 valuable communications to the " Field Naturalist" 

 I have before alluded, in his remarks on " British 

 Birds of the Eobin kind," (vol. i., p. 434), thus 

 endeavours to render in words the sounds emitted 

 by some of our more familiar species when tending their 

 young ; although these again are perfectly distinct from 

 the sweet guttural tones indulged in by many, when feed- 

 ing or caressing their nestlings, and unconscious of the 

 close propinquity of any human being. " The peculiar 

 double note (says Mr. Blyth) which all the species utter 

 when a person is near their nest is worthy of being 

 noticed ; this in the nightingale may be expressed by 

 hweep ; hweep, carre: in the redstart by hweet, tit, tit, 

 tit; hweet, tit, tit: in the robin, by a loud tit tit tit; 

 and now and then a long drawn plaintive note (between 

 a whistle and a hiss), which cannot be expressed in 

 writing : the stonechat's note resembles hweet, jur, jur ; 

 hweet, jur : the whinchat's is yeer, tip ; yeer, tip, tip : 

 and the wheatear also has a note analagous, but which I 

 cannot accurately express in writing from mere memory. 

 The common grey flycatcher has a note of this kind, 

 which may be tolerably expressed by ist, chit ; ist, chit, 

 chit." The singularly happy rendering of most of the 

 above notes will be admitted, I am sure, by all who 

 have studied them in garden or grove, and many others 

 might be added amongst our summer warblers ; yet even 

 an old observer will not unfrequently find himself at 

 fault, when tracing a sound, apparently new to him, to 

 some familiar form amidst the foliage of the trees in 

 summer. The titmice, with rather a series of call notes 

 than any real song, have a hiss to greet the birds- 



