THROUGH THE YEAR 159 



I exclude the birds of passage. Taking the birds 

 that stay with us all the year, I can think only of 

 about a dozen which I have not heard at some 

 time, either in the autumn or winter. These are the 

 blackbird (which, however, does sometimes warble 

 in autumn, as my friend shows), the stone chat, 

 the meadow pipit and the rock pipit, the greenfinch, 

 and the yellow hammer. The Dartford warbler I do 

 not know at all, and I have not watched the dipper, 

 the siskin, and the lesser redpoll enough at these 

 seasons to say anything about them. I have never 

 seen or heard the woodlark. 



The bullfinch seems about the most fastidious of 

 English singing birds. I cannot imagine it as an 

 autumn or winter singer. I should find it still 

 harder to picture the rock pipit's faltering flight song, 

 save in spring or early summer. It is a song of the 

 mating season, all the passion of spring in it ; the 

 rock pipit's flight-song at the edge of the sea cliff in 

 April is exactly like that of the tree pipit in the oak 

 and hazel coppice. 



But the song-thrush, missel-thrush, blackbird, 

 skylark, common bunting, pied wagtail, redbreast, 

 hedge sparrow, gold crest, wren, ring dove, cirl 

 bunting, goldfinch (early autumn, at any rate) and 

 linnet sing in autumn and winter. There may be 

 others, possibly the stonechat and one or two on 

 my list of birds I have never myself heard at these 

 seasons. But, be this so or not, it seems that of 

 our resident singing birds at least half the species 

 sing in three or four seasons, the four-season singers 



