284 BIRD BEHAVIOUR 



denounced our nearly-allied Great Grey Shrike 

 (Lanius excubitor) as an " ungratefull subtill fowle " 

 for the same treacherous manoeuvre. 



But it is curious that such imitative birds do not, 

 vsrhen wild, generally copy human speech, though I 

 have myself come across a case which seemed 

 very like it ; when living a few years ago just north 

 of Regent's Park, I used to hear a voice in the very 

 early morning outside my bedroom saying " Pretty 

 Polly," and at first blamed some one for unfeelingly 

 putting out an unfortunate Parrot to shiver in its 

 cage in a cold spring dawn ; but ultimately I found 

 the talker to be a wild Blackbird, which came to 

 sing his matin song — ^which, as every observer 

 knows, is more varied than his musical perform- 

 ances given later on in the day — from a very tall 

 tree in a garden at the back of my bedroom. Un- 

 less the utterance of these words was a mere "fluke," 

 he had probably picked them up at some time from 

 a Parrot, for the Blackbird is at times imitative, 

 though not nearly so much so as the Starling or 

 Sedge-Warbler, or even the Song-Thrush. If the 

 'resemblance to human speech were merely acci- 

 dental, this might explain Pliny's story of the 

 " talking Thrush " in the possession of the Em- 

 press Agrippina in his day, for the Thrush is 

 notorious for the human-like phrasing of its song. 



I do not know that the well-known and celebrated 

 black talking Hill-Mynahs (Eulabes) of the East 

 exercise any mocking faculty when wild, but if 

 they do not it would be nothing wonderful, con- 



