WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 167 



stone-pitching, and so along under the very window. 

 The blackbird comes almost as often to the lawn, 

 but it is in a different way. His manner is that of a 

 bold marauder, conscious that he has no right, and 

 aware that a shot from an ambuscade may lay him 

 low, but defiantly risking the danger. He perches 

 first on a bush, or on the garden wall, under the 

 sheltering boughs of the lime trees, at a distance of 

 some twenty yards ; then, waiting till all is clear, he 

 makes a desperate rush for the fruit trees or the lawn. 

 The moment he has succeeded in violently seizing 

 some delicious morsel, off he goes, uttering a loud 

 chuckle half as a challenge, half as a vent for his 

 pent-up anxiety. 



This peculiar chuckle is so well known by all the 

 other birds as a note of alarm that every one in the 

 garden immediately moves his position, if only a yard 

 or two. When you are stealing down the side of the 

 hedgerow, endeavouring to get near enough to observe 

 the woodpecker in a tree, or with a gun to shoot a 

 pigeon, the great anxiety is lest you startle a black- 

 bird. If he thinks you have not seen him, he is 

 cunning enough to slip out the other side noiselessly 

 and fly down beside the hedge just above the ground 

 for some distance. He then crosses the field to a 

 hedge on the other side, and, just as he safely lands 

 himself in a thick hawthorn bush a hundred yards 

 away, defiantly utters his cry. The pigeon or the 

 woodpecker will instantly glance round ; but, the 

 cry being at a distance, if you keep still a minute or 



