The Return of Song 221 



of the first morning when the thrush called no 

 more from their crown, we hear the first fitful and 

 uncertain resumption of its song in some cool noon- 

 day of September with a new anticipation of spring 

 which not all the sense of autumn can destroy. It 

 is the same with the autumn song of the robin, 

 which begins, as a rule, its period of summer silence 

 earlier than the thrush. The impression of melan- 

 choly when the robin sings among summer's last 

 roses is a fallacy of unobservant minds. In actual 

 fact, the robin is now singing its first songs of re- 

 viving vigour and defiance, after some weeks' 

 silence during the height of the summer heats. If 

 there is an added note of pathos in its voice, as 

 compared with spring, this is assuredly not due 

 to any infection of melancholy from the autumn 

 scene, but to the fact that the bird is not yet fired 

 by the full impulse of spring. 



Even birds of the same species vary a good 

 deal in the time at which they abandon and resume 

 their song. The time of silence, which marks, as 

 it were, midwinter in their calendar, comes for 

 some even before midsummer ; while the wood- 

 pigeons which remain in our gardens do not cease 

 their cooing until the onset of the October rains 

 and gales. But the song of many birds, from the 

 nightingale downwards, does not last even till the 

 longest day ; and after the first week in July, we 

 count the singers, and find them daily fewer. As 

 a rule, the last song-thrush stops singing before 

 the middle of July ; the notes of the blackcaps and 

 garden warblers die away to broken soliloquies, 



