THE SINGERS 73 



sometimes on two, three, or four, but the number 

 of chicks rarely answers for long to the number of 

 eggs which the warbler's nest held. A vast number 

 of young birds come to a violent end between hatching 

 and fledging time. The bill of bird mortality is very 

 high. Nature scatters her young birds abroad with 

 the squandering hand. She is a life spendthrift. 

 The single bird is no more to her than the single seed. 

 The individual failure or success is of no moment. 



I end these thoughts on warblers of spring and 

 summer with the rook, for the rook is a singing bird : 

 listening to him in spring I could not doubt it. It is 

 his, not the missel thrush's, distinction to be giant 

 singing bird in Europe, as the golden-crowned wren 

 is midget. Anybody who has been under a rookery 

 at dusk, and listened to the turmoil and jabber of the 

 birds preparing for sleep, knows their vocabulary is 

 quite considerable. A plain " caw " and no more is 

 commonly ascribed to the rook ; but he has a dozen, a 

 score of notes besides, which can be heard at any 

 season. The most that people have allowed is that 

 the rook's voice in spring slightly alters, becomes less 

 harsh a droll attempt at a love note. But in truth 

 the rook has a song in March and April. An isolated 

 rook came to the top of the great beech tree in my 

 garden, and sang for ten minutes. I do not believe 

 this was unusual ; rooks throughout England must be 

 singing whilst their mates are laying eggs or sitting. 

 My rook began by calling loudly to any other rooks 



