422 THE THRUSH FAMILY 



feeling and vivacity, curtsying the while, and moving his tail, not up 

 and down, but, like the redstart, horizontally from right to left and 

 left to right. This ritual he has to perform each succeeding spring, 

 whether the fair one is his mate of the previous year or another ; that 

 is, unless, the redstart, which is most unlikely, proves an excep- 

 tion to the general rule. He performs it whether there is a rival 

 or not, and continues to perform it after the lady has been won ; 

 for example, according to Bailly, whenever he brings to her some 

 offering, a juicy grub or lively fly, as she sits incubating in her 

 nest. Birds in love appear, indeed, to display merely because they 

 cannot help doing so ; their feelings demand an outlet in some form 

 of violent effort. The form adopted varies somewhat from species to 

 species for reasons which have yet to be determined. 



The song of the Redstarts is far from reaching the same degree of 

 beauty as their coloration. That of the redstart, such as it is, has 

 been well described by Mr. W. H. Hudson, as follows : " It is impos- 

 sible to listen for any length of time to the redstart, and to many 

 redstarts, without feeling, and almost with irritation, that its strain 

 is only the prelude of a song a promise never performed ; that once 

 upon a time in the remote past it was a sweet, copious, and varied 

 singer, and that only a fragment of its melody now remains. The 

 opening rapidly warbled notes are so charming that the attention 

 is instantly attracted by them. They are composed of two sounds, 

 both beautiful the bright, pure, gushing, robin-like note, and the 

 more tender, expressive, swallow-like note. And that is all ; the 

 song scarcely begins before it ends or collapses, for in most cases 

 the pure sweet opening strain is followed by a curious little farrago 

 of gurgling and squeaking sounds, and little fragments of varied 

 notes, often so low as to be audible only at a few yards' distance." l 

 Let us add that this song, which is curiously like that of the pied- 

 flycatcher, a bird of somewhat similar habits, is often uttered when 

 the redstart is on the wing, hovering, or flying from tree to tree. 



1 Afoot in England, p. 196. 



