6 February Singers 



mounted singers can be easily perceived, is the time 

 to learn to distinguish between the blackbird's and 

 the missel-thrush's song. 



The missel-thrush has so much of the mellowness 

 and softness of the blackbird, that when its notes 

 fall clearly from some distant poplar crown, the ear 

 dwells arrested, and the listener is apt to believe that 

 the blackbird itself is singing. Yet there are marked 

 limitations in the missel-thrush's song which supply 

 a sure distinction. Its phrases are shorter, broken 

 and more monotonously repeated ; and its voice 

 has not the blackbird's compass, or that golden 

 richness with which he turns it in his throat. Dwell- 

 ing for a long time on this tall thrush's song, we 

 seem to find in it a strange quality of ignorant 

 wildness, which is lacking, by comparison, in 

 the more skilled and tutored voices of the song- 

 thrush and blackbird, though present also in the 

 song of the moor-blackbird, or ring ouzel, of the 

 fells. 



Wood-pigeons utter constantly their cooing notes, 

 which we have heard at intervals since some soft 

 morning in December ; and with their spring song 

 they practise their beautiful spring flight, tossing up 

 with a clap of their wings from a high bough, and 

 floating down in a curve to a new perch. Now, too, 

 they fall to fighting on the branches, sidling up and 

 buffeting each other with the curved wrists of their 

 pinions, while their white-rimmed eyes grow round 

 as in surprise to find themselves so angry. So the 

 heat of spring seems to kindle with eternal newness 

 in all nature ; the whole earth receives it as some- 



