LEARNING TO FLY 143 



hend us as a detached and coherent body, distinct from 

 the surrounding scenery. Even then it usually displays a 

 spectator's curiosity rather than any kind of alarm. 



The sudden explosive calls which burst intermittently from 

 the inner shades of the garden shrubberies at midsummer 

 are not expressions of fear, but a blind demand for food 

 the primitive germ of all language. Young thrushes and' 

 blackbirds utter a metallic squawk ; young robins a kindred 

 but shriller cry. Before 

 they leave the nest broods 

 of young starlings utter a 

 rhythmical strident chorus 

 which rises as they hear 

 the parent bird's approach, 

 and dies down again as it 

 departs with its low note 

 of satisfied activity. Broods 

 of white owls under the 

 church roof raise a louder 

 and harsher tumult of the 

 same kind ; sparrows in 

 the ivy cheep more shrilly ; 

 and young martins in the 

 eaves make a murmuring 

 stir. Some of the noisiest 

 of all woodland birds as 

 they gain their feathers are 



little woodpeckers. Young green woodpeckers shout from 

 their hole, in some rotten beech or oak bough, so loud that 

 they can be heard for a hundred and fifty yards. Their cry 

 is more like that of the adult great spotted woodpecker, 

 or the wryneck, than the free laughing note of their parent. 

 One of the brood often climbs to the mouth of the hole, and 



YOUNG GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKERS 



