104 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



years in the flower-garden at Lilford a male Redbreast, 

 who had somewhere picked up a song entirely 

 unlike his natural sweet but melancholy strain, that 

 he seemed to have entirely lost. I am no musician, 

 and cannot attempt to describe this acquisition ; it 

 was loud, short, but not very sweet, and had I not 

 repeatedly seen the bird in the act of giving utterance 

 to it, I should, I think, have attributed it to some 

 escaped foreign Finch or other hard-billed bird. The 

 wailing note of the Redbreast when in fear of danger 

 for its young is peculiarly plaintive and touching, 

 and has more than once attracted my notice to the 

 presence of a prowling house-cat or weasel. I know 

 of two instances in which a pair of Redbreasts dis- 

 possessed other birds of their nests ; in one case a 

 Nightingale was thus ousted from her domicile, in 

 w^hich she had laid two eggs, in the other a Redstart 

 was the sufferer. I have several times met with 

 clutches of pure white eggs of the Redbreast, and 

 once with a nest containing six eggs, of which two 

 were white and the remainder of the usual colour. 

 A wild Robin will become perfectly tame in a few 

 days if a little food is gently thrown down in his sight 

 by the same person, and he is not startled by any 

 sudden or abrupt movements. One of these birds, of 

 whom I had made a fuiend by giving him morsels 

 of ground-bait every morning for a week, became so 

 fearless, that he more than once perched on my fishing- 

 rod as I held it over the water, and came towards me 

 every day as I approached the river with a chirp of 

 welcome. If I took no notice of him at once, he 

 w^ould set up an impetuous ticJc, ticJc, tick, and settle 

 close to me with a sort of "you know what I want" 

 look about him that was quite irresistible. 



