BIRD-HAUNTED LONDON 129 



made me wonder whether family parties of migratory 

 birds do not often travel more or less on the route 

 of migration, and so gradually converge in some 

 numbers. A hen robin with three young was another 

 visitor remaining for two days. She used to sit and 

 sing to her young or croon to them in a murmurous 

 undertone only audible at about ten feet away, and 

 quite different from the male's song, or rather songs. 

 Do the hen-birds of other species thus musically 

 whisper to their young ? In the mating season it is 

 natural that the hen-bird, the more passive and 

 conservative in character (anabolic) and reluctant in 

 passion, should be nearly always songless. But the 

 maternal passion is as powerful as the sexual passion 

 of the katabolic male. If hen-birds car. or do sing, 

 that is to say, it would be in the intervals of con- 

 ducting the young and at a time when they are able 

 more or less to fend for their own living. Lastly, 

 a pair of whitethroats (adults) ha\mted the garden for 

 three days at the beginning of one September, pur- 

 suing their daily round with a composure divertingly 

 unlike their usual spirits. So conspicuously is the 

 metabolism of birds effected by the changing acts in 

 the theatre of the seasons. 



Two pairs of blue-tits nested in my garden in 

 1920,1 and numerous as are the observations of these 

 drolls en famille, I cannot refrain from trying to 

 communicate portions of the charm of my own ex- 

 perience. Both pairs were on the best of terms 

 with their landlord, and, when the young were hatched, 

 would fly to and fro from their boxes with my head 

 leaned against them. The hen is a close sitter, and 

 her spouse exhausts every argument to persuade her 

 into the simlight. But she (the singular must do for 

 the plural) was not often to be blandished from her 

 little white eggs, starred with chestnut, so that he 

 would either fly in or his vociferations became so 

 importunate that out she would fly and off they 



1 Not to mention a pair of robins, who had filled an old 

 kettle with nesting material by the third week in tropical 

 February 1921. 



9 



