PRECOCIOUS SPRING 97 



cocity grows among the species that multiply in number. 

 Tits multiply and on the 2jth March, 1934, were already 

 feeding young in the very shallow nesting box that was 

 contrived by a visitor who was thought to know more 

 about carpentry than about birds. But the criticism was 

 dispersed by a pair of blue-tits, who not only nested 

 there, but nested weeks before the due date. How the 

 large family they always produce can live in those close 

 quarters, how they can be fed before grubs and bugs and 

 such rough monosyllables become frequent, passes con 

 jecture. The sparrows have young, have eggs, and are 

 building nests. They observe no regular dates, like the 

 well-ordered migrants, who journey and sing and build 

 as pat to the moment as &quot; the catastrophe of the old 

 comedy/* Most strange of all, a new family of blackbirds 

 fly about as if they were already old, and would be 

 thought so if they were not still fed by the parents, both 

 brown and black. 



The blackbirds give instance of the most unexpected 

 precocity. The cock bird does not time his orange bill 

 as a rule till the almanac suggests the approach of astrono 

 mical spring. He does not sing in any old month, like 

 the thrush or missel thrush ; and since the lyric save 

 with thrush, robin, and wren is correlated with nest- 

 building, and belongs to 



The wedding song of sun and rain, 



we should not expect to find the blackbird s nest before 

 we heard the song the loveliest of all and most memor 

 able. No one can fail to hear it or to recognise it when 

 heard. What influence in the spring of 1934 inspired the 

 blackbird ? In two gardens, at any rate, the birds quite 

 transposed the. usual order : first robin, then thrush, then 

 either tit or blackbird. That year in one we watched the 



G T.V.E. 



