378 INSECTIVOIL'E. 



though probably only those in which the eggs of insects are 

 lodged. While confined to vegetable diet, it does not sing 

 with its full power. 



Its song is generally given from a high perch, or an ele- 

 vated branch, or the top twig, if the tree be not very lofty. 

 While it sings, the axis of the body is very oblique, by the 

 elevation of the head, and the throat is much inflated. While 

 the bird is trilling, in which it excels every songster of the 

 grove in rapidity and clearness, and in the swells and 

 cadences which it gives to the same trill, the throat has a 

 very strong convulsive motion, and the whole bird appears 

 to be worked into a high state of excitement. It has, indeed, 

 the wildest and most witching notes of all our warblers ; it 

 has not, certainly, the volume and variety of the nightingale, 

 neither has it the ineffably sweet chant of the garden war- 

 bler ; but its notes take one by surprise, and the changes, and 

 especially the trills, are finer than those of any other bird. 

 The song, when the bird is at rest, appears to be, by turns, 

 like those of several birds ; but it transposes them into a 

 lower or rather a minor key, and finishes off with variations 

 of its own ; and, as is the case with the works of some of the 

 more impassioned musical composers, the very genius (so to 

 speajs:) of the bird interferes with the melody, and a sort of 

 indescribable wildness is the character of the whole. 



When the supply of insects, in the destruction of which, 

 while they last, the black-cap is very assiduous, fails, it levies 

 its contributions pretty copiously upon currants, raspberries, 

 and other soft fruits ; but, as is the case with most of the 

 tribe, the harm which it does is, in all probability, very small 

 in proportion to the good, as one day of the ravages of cater- 

 pillars, at the time when the black-cap is most active in their 

 destruction, would prevent the coming to maturity of ten 

 times the quantity of fruit that the bird ever consumes. 



As the black-cap does not extend its winter migrations far 



