HEDGE ACCENTOR. 81 



fore, no opportunity of hearing its richly modulated notes as it 

 sits like a large yellow flower among the green leaves. A friend 

 who has frequently heard it in the forests of Germany lately de- 

 scribed it to me as resembling the notes of a flute, changing at 

 times to a querulous, " Ah, how d'ye doT on hearing approaching 

 footsteps. A different and perhaps less civil construction, how- 

 ever, has been put upon it by a recent contributor to " Chambers' 

 Journal," who remarks that " the song of this splendid bird a 

 flute-like whistle, with a cadence not unlike speech sounds 

 ominous to the low German, short of coin; for Hans, drinking 

 before the ale-house door, hears the Oriole sing from the lindens, 

 "Hast du gesopen? so betahl du." "(Hast thou quaffed? then 



pay)." 



INSESSOKES. S YL VIA D^E. 



DENTIROSTRES. 



THE HEDGE ACCENTOR. 



ACCENTOR MODULARIS. 



THE familiar hedge-sparrow is everywhere known, from Sutherland- 

 shire to the Mull of Galloway, and on all the Hebrides, except the 

 bleakest islands, On Ailsa Craig even an isolated refuge, without 

 hedge-rows or any attractive brushwood which make the home of 

 the species unseen in the not far distant valleys of Ayrshire 

 it hops briskly among the broken boulders, and trills its wren-like 

 song among the ungainly guillemots with as much heartiness as 

 if it never knew a more verdant spot. In the dull gloom of one 

 of the numerous caves intersecting that remarkable rock, I have 

 seen the nest of this bird placed in a ledge of rock at the root of 

 a handful of the hart's-tongue fern, the floor of the cave being 

 covered with water, and forming a strange contrast to the site 

 usually selected by the confiding shufflewing near the abodes of 

 men. 



From its habit of breeding early in the season, this bird is often 

 robbed of its eggs by wandering schoolboys, who treasure them 

 for their pleasing colour, and in almost all rural districts these 

 young persecutors indulge in the regular habit of prowling along 

 the yet leafless hedgerows, scrubby bushes, or cast-up heaps of 

 winter prunings, where their plunder is only too easy of discovery. 



