personal knowledge of late years, which may be worth recording,

the first of a Starling, the second of a Blackbird.


1. I have in my grounds a large and very fine Scotch fir,

almost entirely covered with dense masses of ivy ; Mr. Ruskin

once wrote that a Scotch fir so clad is one of the most beautiful

objedts in Nature. Certainly this tree was, at the time of which

I write, most beautiful, with immense tapering racemes of ivy

drooping down towards a pool. It is less so now, for though the

ivy near the stem seems ever to thicken, the lower drooping

boughs have died.


It is the home of innumerable birds, chiefly Starlings.

Now-a-days my Bankiva Jungle hens insist upon making their

nests in the abysses of the ivy, sometimes at the very top, which

must be quite a hundred feet high. Javanese Peafowls, too, often

roost on the boughs, but do not seem at all to overawe the

smaller fry. One evening, above the hubbub of probably

hundreds of voices at roosting-time, I heard the distinct “ come

bock” of a hen Guinea-fowl. I then possessed no Guinea-fowl,

but suspected that some might have been surreptitiously

introduced at a cottage near, where I did not allow Poultry

to be kept. Another evening, one of my men distinctly heard

the supposed Guinea-fowl. It turned out to be a Starling, which

for some months frequented the tree, and treated us to music

which doubtless it had picked up at a farm where Guinea-fowl

were kept.


2. The second instance is a much more striking one—

that of a wild Blackbird which imitates a postman’s whistle. In

the countrified region where I live, post offices are far apart ;

and so the postman blows a whistle as he drives along the road,

and letters are taken at or brought out from many cottage-gates.

His whistle is very prolonged and very shrill. Early last year

(I think in February) the well-known whistle was heard, once or

twice, hours before the proper time. Everyone was puzzled ;

then it was traced to a hamlet about a quarter of a mile from my

gate. I heard it several times myself, and thought it the work

of a mischievous boy who ought to be suppressed. It became

more frequent, and after some days one of my servants assured

me that the whistler was a bird. This I realty did not at first

believe, but was soon convinced. The whistler was, and I am

glad to say is, a singularly beautiful Blackbird, who day by day

whistled more strongly, generally from an apple tree in my

grounds. His voice, nearly always heard from above (for he

haunts a valley) sounds much farther off than it is ; as the

season advanced, he continually began his long whistle and then



