76 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



found that invariably on leaving the nest he uttered 

 his imitation of a fowl cackling, and no other note 

 or sound of any kind. It was as if he was not merely 

 imitating a sound, but had seen a fowl leaving the 

 nest and then cackling, and mimicked the whole 

 proceeding, and had kept up the habit after the 

 young were hatched. 



To return to my experience on the common. 

 About fifty yards from the spot where I sat there 

 was a dense thicket of furze and thorn, with a huge 

 mound in the middle composed of a tangle of 

 whitethorn and bramble bushes mixed with ivy and 

 clematis. From this spot, at intervals of half a 

 minute or so, there issued the call of a duck — ^the 

 prolonged, hoarse call of a drake, two or three times 

 repeated, evidently emitted in distress. I con- 

 jectured that it came from one of a small flock of 

 ducks belonging to a cottage near the edge of the 

 common on that side. The flock, as I had seen, 

 was accustomed to go some distance from home, 

 and I supposed that one of them, a drake, had got 

 into that brambly thicket and could not make his 

 way out. For half an hour I heard the calls without 

 paying much attention, absorbed in watching the 

 quaint little songster close to me and his curious 

 gestures when emitting his sustained reeling sounds. 

 In the end the persistent distressed calling of the 

 drake lost in a brambly labyrinth got a little on my 



