YOUNG BLACKBIRD'S CALL 59 



her own veins. And as colour changes, growing deeper 

 and more intense, so do sounds change : for the songs of 

 yesterday there are shrill hunger-cries. 



One of the oftenest heard in all the open woods, in 

 hedges, and even out in the cornfields is the curious 

 musical call of the young blackbird. It is like the 

 chuckle of the adult, but not so loud, full, happy, and 

 prolonged; it is shriller, and drops at the end to a 

 plaintive, impatient sound, a little pathetic a cry of 

 the young bird to its too long absent mother. When 

 very hungry he emits this shrill musical call at intervals 

 of ten to fifteen seconds ; it may be heard distinctly a 

 couple of hundred yards away. 



The numbers of young blackbirds and throstles 

 apparently just out of the nest astonish one. They are 

 not only in the copses and hedges, and on almost every 

 roadside tree, but you constantly see them on the 

 ground in the lanes and public roads, standing still, 

 quite unconscious of danger. The poor helpless bird 

 looks up at you in a sort of amazement, never having 

 seen men walking or riding on bicycles; but he 

 hesitates, not knowing whether to fly away or stand 

 still. Thrush or blackbird, he is curiously interesting 

 to look at. The young thrush, with his yellowish- white 

 spotty breast, the remains of down on his plumage, his 

 wide yellow mouth, and raised head with large, fixed, 

 toad-like eyes, has a distinctly reptilian appearance. 

 Not so the young blackbird, standing motionless on the 

 road, in doubt too as to what you are; his short tail raised, 



