78 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



which he perhaps did not know at all, but the sounds 

 he had borrowed from two species so wide apart 

 in their character and language. 



The astonishing thing in this case was that the 

 bird never uttered a note of his own original and 

 exceedingly copious song ; and I could only suppose 

 that he had never learned the thrush melody, that 

 he had perhaps been picked up as a fledgling and 

 put in a cage, where he had imitated the sounds he 

 heard and liked best and made them his song, and 

 that he had finally escaped or had been liberated. 



The wild thrush, we know, does introduce certain 

 imitations into his own song, but the borrowed notes, 

 or even phrases, are, as a rule, few and not always 

 to be distinguished from his own. Sometimes one 

 can pick them out ; thus, on the borders of a marsh 

 where redshanks bred, I have heard- the call of that 

 bird distinctly given by the thrush. And again, 

 where the ring-ou?el is common, the thrush will 

 get its brief song exactly. 



When thrushes taken from the nest are reared in 

 towns where they never hear the thrush or any other 

 bird sing, they are often exceedingly vocal and utter 

 a medley of sounds which are sometimes distressing 

 to the ear. I have heard many caged thrushes of 

 this kind in London, but the most remarkable in- 

 stance I have met with was at the little seaside town 

 of Seaford. Here in the main shopping street a 



