1891.  England.
July 13-16
(No 2)
St. Ives. - over the brook I found it exceedingly
difficult at times to realize that I was in England
instead of in some lowly glen among the White Mts.
of New Hampshire listening to the Winter Wren. Our
bird in particular sang very nearly like the species
just mentioned and the songs of all three sounded
much more like it than anything I have heard
elsewhere in England. This was probably due not
to any local peculiarities of the St Ives Wrens but
simply to [deleted]the fact that[/deleted] the conditions under which
I heard them on this occasion. The steep banks
gave resonance to their notes and there was no
extraneous sounds of wheels or talking as has usually
been the case here in England. I doubt much now
whether a really superior singer, such as the one I
heard this morning, would suffer by comparison with
one of our own New England birds were the two to be
heard together in our northern New England woods.
Indeed it might take an expert in bird music
to identify the songs under such conditions.
  From my window in one of the houses on the
terrace in ST. Ives I see Jackdaws continually
flying about over the land and Gulls over the
sea. At evening a few Swifts appear. I doubt
if they breed in the town but they certainly
breed in some numbers at [?], ten miles
  I also see or hear an occasional Green Finch
or Hedge Accentor near the house and early (about
sunrise) on the morning of the 16th two Throstles
and a Blackbird sang for fifteen or twenty