Birds of an Oxford College 91 



For among the imitative notes which the starling 

 will now and then include in sudden parentheses, 

 occur clear renderings of the laughing call of the 

 green woodpecker and the twisting cry of the 

 plovers that tumble above the meadows in spring. 

 The woodpecker is very rarely to be heard within 

 earshot of the starling's nesting-place, and the 

 peewit never ; so that the repetition of their proper 

 cries, sometimes weeks later than the peewit's, at 

 any rate, has ceased in its natural surroundings, 

 has a singular and almost uncanny effect when it 

 occurs among the chatterings and pipings which 

 the starling lets fall from the gable. 



The music of the true song-birds is heard within 

 the quadrangle only from the blackbird. One 

 dwells with his mate in the hollow behind the single 

 line of bushes ; and he rises to the boughs of the 

 single sycamore, both in day-time and before the 

 dawn breaks clearly, and pours forth for a few 

 moments the full richness of his song. The scanty 

 belt of verdure provides shelter for only this one 

 pair of birds among all those species which demand 

 green boughs or undergrowth to dwell in ; and with 

 so scanty a veil of protection the life of these two 

 blackbirds is even fuller of riot and alarms than 

 is general with their excitable kind. Though the 

 habits of the blackbird and song- thrush are in many 

 respects closely similar, it is characteristic of a certain 

 distinction in their requirements that this nook 

 where scanty bushes skirt ample walls is colonized 

 by the blackbird and not by the thrush. For, in 

 spite of the blackbird being the shyer and more 



