486 PERCHING BIRDS. 



willow-swamps and other damp situations. Its song has been compared by Mr. 

 Seebohm to that of several other birds. " His first attempts at singing are harsh 

 and grating, like the notes of the sedge- warbler, or the still harsher notes of the 

 whitethroat ; these are followed by several variations in a louder and rather more 

 melodious tone, repeated over and over again somewhat in the fashion of the song- 

 thrush. After this you might fancy that the little songster was trying to mimic 

 the various alarm-notes of all the birds he can remember; the chiz-zit of the 

 wagtail, the tip-tip-tip of the blackbird, and especially the ivhit-whit of the 

 chaffinch. As he improves in voice he sings louder and longer, until at last he 

 almost approaches the nightingale in the richness of the melody that he pours forth. 

 Sometimes he will sing as he flies upwards, descending with expanded wings and 

 tail to alight on the highest bough of some low tree, almost exactly as the tree-pipit 

 does in the meadows of our own land. When the females have arrived, there comes 

 at the end of his song the most metallic notes I have ever heard a bird utter. It is 

 a sort of ting ting, resembling the sound produced by striking a suspended bar of 

 steel with another piece of the same metal. The female appears to shun the open 

 far more carefully than her mate ; and while he will be perched upon a topmost 

 spray, gladdening the whole air around him with his varied tuneful melody, she will 

 remain in the undergrowth beneath him gliding hither and thither more like a 

 mouse than a bird through the branches." The nest of the bluethroat is very well 

 concealed in the side of a tussock of grass and is lined with fine roots and hair ; 

 and the eggs are olive-coloured. When the young leave the nest, they forage about 

 for insects in the undergrowth, peering at a stranger with the pretty wistfulness 

 of young robins, to which they bear a rough resemblance in their actions. In Spain 

 the bluethroat is to be met with in very dry situations, but that is only when the 

 birds are on migration ; and the same is probably true of its occurrence in the arid 

 districts of Ladak. From our own observations the bluethroat seems to migrate 

 singly or in couples, but Mr. Gaetke states that they arrive in flocks upon Heligo- 

 land, both in the month of May and in early autumn. On Heligoland they are 

 chiefly to be found in the potato-fields in autumn, while in spring they frequent 

 the gooseberry and currant bushes of the gardens. We have seen bluethroats 

 sheltering in dry scrub on migration ; when every now and then a bird would flit 

 out of its cover, dart upon an insect, and then steal away into the recesses of the 

 bushes, to emerge a moment after for another rapid sally. On the Norfolk coast 

 the bluethroat is well known as a September visitant, and has even appeared in 

 considerable numbers when weather - stayed. We met with bluethroats in the 

 neighbourhood of the Lake of Geneva, one of which, with an entirely blue gorget, 

 frequented a garden, although most of those seen inhabited reed-beds in the 

 marshes of the Rhone. The adult male has the upper-parts brown, with a con- 

 spicuous white or buff eyebrow ; the throat and upper-breast are metallic cobalt-blue, 

 centred with a large spot of pure white or chestnut, a band of black succeeding 

 the blue, bordered by another band of chestnut ; the rest of the under-parts being 

 buffy white. 



An inhabitant of the greater part of Europe, the redbreast or 



robin (E. rubecula) is such a familiar and well-known bird as to 



require but scant notice here. Breeding alike in our gardens and shrubberies and 



