62 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



stant chorister among our summer birds of passage. 

 The April woods at home would often have been 

 almost silent years ago had it not been for willow 

 wren with cuckoo ; blackbirds and thrushes were 

 not so numerous as they are to-day ; and after a 

 cruel winter even large woods in some seasons would 

 have only a few nesting pairs. But hundreds of the 

 willow wrens would be in our great wood by the 

 middle of April, and the constancy and abundance 

 of the songs from the oaks and ash trees made up 

 for the weakness of each song separately. Individual 

 singers of the same species often differ much in 

 merit ; differ in the timbre as well as in the phrasing 

 of the song. I had some correspondence on this 

 with a writer who was always discriminating in his 

 study of birds, Howard Saunders. We had listened 

 to cirl buntings in different districts. His rendering 

 of the bird's song was " zizi, zizi, zizi " a triplice of 

 " zizis " like the triplice of thrush " peeburs." I have 

 heard the cirl bunting sing in this yellow-hammer 

 way in late summer; but many cirl buntings I 

 have listened to have a bubbling note, or bold shake, 

 quite above the yellow-hammer level. 



Birds may owe something, when their song is at 

 its best, to the state of the air ; I have an idea that 

 they are better to hear in wet than in hot weather. 

 After heavy showers the notes of some birds as the 

 cirl bunting ring out clear and pure. Perhaps the 

 air, rarified, clear of all floating particles of matter, 



