Thrushes. 161 
distance, and that colours attract them. It can 
hardly be scent, because when flowers are placed in a 
room and the window left open the wind generally 
blows strongly into the apartment, and odours will 
not travel against a breeze. It seems natural that in 
both cases the continual watch for certain things 
should enable bird and insect to observe the faintest 
indication. Slugs, caterpillars, and such creatures, 
too, in moving among the grass, cause a slight agita- 
tion of the grass-blades ; they lift up a leaf by crawl- 
ing under it, or depress it with their weight by getting 
on it. This may enable the bird to detect their 
presence, even when quite hidden by the herbage, 
experience having taught it that when grass is moved 
by the wind broad patches sway simultaneously, but 
when an insect or caterpillar is the agent only a single 
leaf or blade is stirred. 
At the farmhouse here, robins, wrens, and tomtits 
are always hanging about the courtyard, especially 
close to the dairy, where one or other may be con- 
stantly seen perched on the palings ; neither do they 
scruple to enter the dairy, the brewhouse, or wood- 
house adjacent, when they see a chance. The logs 
(for fuel) stored in the latter doubtless afford them 
insects from under the dead bark. 
Among the most constant residents in the garden 
at Wick Farm are the song thrushes. They are the 
tamest of the larger birds; they come every morning 
right under the old bay-window of the sitting-room on 
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