BIRD LIFE IN WINTER 97 



pheasants here and no gamekeepers to shoot him, 

 and, as in Ireland, the people do not like to injure 

 though they do not love him. 



If you chance to hear a bird note or phrase that is 

 new to you in this place you may be sure the magpie 

 is its author. Like the jay he is an inventor of new 

 sounds and has a somewhat different language for 

 every part of the country. The loud brisk chatter, 

 his alarm note, which resembles the tremulous bleat 

 of a goat, is always the same ; but his ordinary lan- 

 guage, used in conversation, when he is with his mate 

 or a small party of friends, is curiously varied and full 

 of surprises. It was one of my amusements in genial 

 days in winter when a confabulation was in progress 

 to steal as near as I could and sit down among the 

 bushes to listen. 



On one such occasion, where the furze was very 

 thick and high, I discovered that the bushes all round 

 me teemed with minute, shadowy-looking bird-forms 

 silently hopping and flitting about. They were 

 golden-crested wrens wintering in this treeless place 

 in considerable numbers. Some of the small boys I 

 talked to in this neighbourhood knew the bird as the 

 "Golden Christian Wrennie" a rather pretty variant. 



But the Golden Christian Wrennie is not the wren 

 not the Cornish wren ; for there is a proper Cornish 

 wren, even as there is a St. Kilda wren, and as there is 

 a native wren, or local race or Troglodytes parvulus, in 

 every county, in every village and farm-house and 

 wood and coppice and hedge in the United Kingdom. 

 He is a home-keeping little bird, and when you find 



