A DORSET DIARY 161 



I thought of him as that intangible desire for which 

 we look and sigh. 



Witchell declares that the perceptible difference be- 

 tween matins and evensong in bird music is due to the 

 operation of different influences. In the morning birds 

 sing the pleasures of anticipation, in the evening from 

 leisure and the sense of a good day's work accomplished. 

 May we not go even further and discover in these 

 emotional differences a subtle adaptation to the atmo- 

 spheric conditions ? The spring song of the robin is 

 glad, the autumn song subdued and melancholy, and 

 this change is a reality, and not simply due to a hyper- 

 trophied fancy on our part which interprets the robin's 

 two songs by the time of the year in which he sings them. 

 Nature is nearly all fitness and harmony ; her creatures 

 are a pattern of adaptations. The voice of the buzzard 

 is adapted to the wildness and solitude of his haunts : 

 why should not the morning and evening songs of birds 

 be adapted to the exultation of the one and the repose 

 of the other ? There may even be a physiological 

 change in the metabolism of the body, just as when 

 Wordsworth wrote " my heart leaps up when I behold '' 

 he wrote as a good physicist as well as a good poet. 

 His body actually did echo his emotion. 



I noticed that several blackbirds were perched about 

 this thrush, attempting to sing, but only producing a 

 metallic sound, something like that of a spoon striking 

 the inside of a cup, but not quite so dull. Is it an 

 untenable hypothesis that blackbirds do actually lose 

 their voices in the winter ? Here, at any rate, were 

 favourable conditions — dusk, a warm day, the example 

 of other birds, their own attitude and, as it appeared, 

 desire to sing. By the village church a barn-owl was 

 floating silently, low down almost at the roots of the 

 apple-trees in an orchard. 



Nor was I at the end of the repertory of song, for 

 starlings were carrying through their astonishing per- 

 formance on the vane of the church tower, and if the 

 honest starling is not pre-eminent for quality, he carries 

 off the palm for variety. I think he is a mocker, for I 

 have often heard him imitating bird-notes, especially 



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