152 IMPRESSIONS OF SOME ENGLISH BIRDS. 



vireo. The English sparrows and buntings are 

 harsh-voiced, and their songs, when they have songs, 

 are crude. The yellowhammer comes nearest to our 

 typical sparrow ; it is very common, and is a persist- 

 ent songster, but the song is slight, like that of our 

 savanna sparrow scarcely more than the chirping 

 of a grasshopper. In form and color it is much like 

 our vesper sparrow, except that the head of the male 

 has a light yellow tinge. 



The green finch or linnet is an abundant bird ev- 

 erywhere, but its song is less pleasing than that of 

 several of our finches. The goldfinch is very rare, 

 mainly, perhaps, because it is so persistently trapped 

 by bird-fanciers ; its song is a series of twitters and 

 chirps, less musical to my ear than that of our gold- 

 finch, especially when a flock of the latter are con- 

 gregated in a tree and inflating their throats in 

 rivalry. Their golden-crowned kinglet has a fine 

 thread-like song, far less than that of our kinglet, 

 less even than that of our black and white creeper. 

 The nuthatch has not the soft, clear calf of ours, and 

 the various woodpeckers figure much less ; there is 

 less wood to peck, and they seem a more shy and 

 silent race. I saw but one in all my walks, and that 

 was near Wolmer Forest. I looked in vain for the 

 wood-lark ; the country people confound it with the 

 pipit. The blackcap warbler I found to be a rare 

 and much over-praised bird. The nightingale is very 

 restricted in its range, and is nearly silent by the 

 middle of June. I made a desperate attempt to find it 



