8 February Singers 



in its way as tuneful, as the melody streaming from 

 the upper air. All through the month the song of 

 the skylarks gathers power ; and when we see 

 them spiring aloft and up- wind with that amazing 

 effort of the muscles of voice and wing, we recognize 

 how the loose flight of their winter flocks across 

 the fallows was not, as it might appear, the fluttering 

 gait of weakness, but the perfection of indifferent 

 ease. 



Starlings and hedge-sparrows have been heard at 

 intervals for many weeks ; and the great tit's clear 

 spring call now contrasts with the softer chime of 

 the blue tit. When the wren is challenging the 

 universe from his ivied stump, and the linnet 

 regains his first harsh song in the hedges of the same 

 fallows where he was last heard piping in a still 

 October noon, the roll of the February singers is 

 complete. It includes all the chief song-birds 

 which are winter residents in this country, though 

 some of them may not be in perfect song till March 

 or April. All birds have now assumed the full 

 brightness of their breeding plumage, and there is 

 an endlessly fascinating beauty in the perfection of 

 their colour and gloss. Burnished titmice twitch 

 through the inky pines ; the rose-breasted bullfinch 

 brightens the hedge of the garden, where he is the 

 most beautiful, if the most unmitigated of pests ; 

 and birds which have no great reputation for beauty 

 of plumage display at this time of year a purity 

 and a delicate contrast in their Quaker hues which 

 are scarcely less attractive than all the kingfisher's 

 splendours. Even the black coot, bluff-built as a 



