THE SINGERS 49 



in my garden. Starlings do now and then pick 

 a few bars out of the thrush's song and perform 

 these finely ; but their usual medley, full of entranc- 

 ing little clicks and shakes and softest chatterings, 

 does not seem to me to owe much to the song thrush, 

 or to any other constant singing - bird. Notes it 

 contains that closely resemble those of daw and 

 rook the daw note is particularly common hi the 

 starling's song but I feel that too much is made 

 of the plagiarism of the starling. Even insist that 

 he does absorb the cries and phrases of half-a-dozen 

 or more wild birds : his song as a whole is yet 

 original. The starling's poetry is like Tennyson's 

 there is hardly a striking passage in one or the other 

 which, to some critical ear or memory, is not borrowed. 

 Yet, when all has been said about this, the strong feel- 

 ing is with one that the poetry of both is their own. 



What is true of starling is true of sedge-warbler. 

 Mr. Witchell himself did not convince me that the 

 sedge-warbler is the mere mimic it is supposed to 

 be. He made a table of statistics on sedge-warbler 

 song. He listened to fourteen sedge-warblers, which, 

 he believed, imitated, more or less exactly, the strik- 

 ing notes of sparrow, wren, chaffinch, swallow, and 

 other common English birds. He repeatedly heard 

 the sparrows' " chissick " and the sparrows' " tell 

 tell," the chaffinches' " pink " l or " spink." Eleven 



1 I have just heard the spring "pink, pink" of the chaffinch in 

 a London street, a delightful experience March 26, 1908. 



D 



