66 Rock Thrushes 



Some day, when my poor old rock thrush — about 

 as old and as faithful as my Passera — has winged his 

 flight to a better land, I shall perhaps return to 

 Auvergne, in the merry month of May, to seek his 

 successor. At any rate, I know where to find one. My 

 old fellow — for nine years is fairly old for a cage bird of 

 that species ; it is certainly very middle-aged — was reared 

 by myself in the same way, and under very much the 

 same circumstances, as the blue thrush. He was one 

 of a brood of four, all of which were unable to feed 

 themselves when I brought them home from Italy, 

 and this meant feeding them at least every two hours 

 of the journey : an awkward thing to do if the 

 carriages of the train are full, and fellow-travellers 

 unappreciative. Yet the latter is not often the case ; 

 but, on the contrary, it is seldom or ever that I have 

 found them anything but keenly interested in seeing 

 my birds, which emboldens me to take them out 

 one by one to make sure that they receive plenty 

 under rather trying circumstances. 



And so each of my young rock thrushes were 

 brought out, opening their bright orange mouths for 

 a piece of raw meat [as in turns I held them in 

 my left hand], as readily as they would have had the 

 raw meat been a fat grub, my hand their nest on the 

 slopes of Monte Crocione, above Lecco, and I their 

 very own father. 



At Basle and Calais, if there was time, my first 

 action after a necessary inspection of luggage was 

 to ask for some bceuf crude at the buffet, pour 

 des otseaux, and then to beg a porter to find me a 



