SONG-THBUSH 43 



takes them as they come. As a rule, when he has produced a 

 beautiful note, he will repeat it twice or thrice ; on this account 

 Browning has called him a ' wise bird,' because he can 



recapture 

 The first fine careless raptura 



There is not in this song the faintest trace of plaintiveness, and 

 of that heart-touching quality of tenderness which gives so great a 

 charm to some of the warblers. It is pre-eminently cheerful ; a 

 song of summer and love and happiness of so contagious a spirit 

 that to listen to it critically, as one would listen to the polished 

 phrases of the nightingale, would be impossible. 



The throstle is a very persistent singer : in spring and summer 

 his loud carols may be heard from a tree-top at four o'clock or half- 

 past three in the morning ; throughout the day he sings at intervals, 

 and again, more continuously, in the evening, when he keeps up an 

 intermittent flow of melody until dark. His evening music always 

 seems his best, but the effect is probably due to the comparative 

 silence and the witching aspect of nature at that hour, when the sky 

 is still luminous, and the earth beneath the dusky green foliage lies 

 in deepest shadow. 



So far only the music of the throstle has been considered ; but 

 in the case of this bird the music is nearly everything. When we 

 think of the throstle, we have the small sober-coloured figure that 

 skulks in the evergreens, and its life-habits, less in our minds than 

 the overmastering musical sounds with which he fills the green 

 places of the earth from early spring until the great silence of July 

 and August falls on nature. 



The song-thrush is a common species in suitable localities 

 throughout the British Islands, being rarest in the north of Scotland. 

 He is found in this country all the year round, but it was discovered 

 many years ago, by Professor Newton, that a very limited number 

 of birds remain to winter with us. Probably they migrate by night, 

 as the fieldfare and redwing are known to do, and, being much less 

 gregarious than those birds, come and go without exciting attention. 

 The fact remains that, where they are abundant in summer, a tune 

 comes in autumn when they mysteriously vanish. One or two 

 individuals may remain where twenty or thirty existed previously ; 

 and if they only shifted their quarters, as the missel-thrushes do in 

 some parts of the country, they would be found in considerable 

 numbers during the winter in some districts. But the disappearance 



