Lyndhurst, New Forest.
1909.
Aug 19-23
(No 7)
  The garden just mentioned is alive with Robins and Blackbirds.
The Robins are in full song at morning & evening. Their notes
are varied, bright & glancing and I never tire of listening to
them. The birds themselves are most tame & confiding permitting
one to approach them within a few yards or even feet. Their
call notes are sharp & metallic and almost exactly like that
of our Cardinal Grosbeak. The Blackbirds are out of song
but I hear them clucking something like Hermit Thrushes and
uttering a series of laughing calls, almost exactly like those of
our Robin, when they take wing. They have a habit of
waving their tails almost like our Cat-bird and also of
slowly elevating & depressing the tail, like our Hermit Thrush.
They run about on the lawns like the American Robin
but unlike him are much given to concealing themselves in
dense thickets when approached. Indeed it is really difficult
to get a good view of them and the same may be said,
with equal truth, of most of the smaller British birds as
I noticed over & over again in 1891.
Garden Birds
  House Sparrows swarm in this garden. When the guests
at the hotel assembled for afternoon tea on the lawn the
Sparrows crowd close about them venturing within a yard
or two of the table to seize upon the small pieces of bread
that everyone throw to them. But in other parts of the
grounds & everywhere else in England (where they seem to
me this summer as numerous as Boston & Cambridge)
they are exceedingly shy. For the most part they are now
frequenting the fields of ripe grain & I seldom see them
in village streets.
  On the evening of the 21st I saw a big Bat flying
rapidly to & fro over the garden, occasionally dropping suddenly.
It looked as large as one Atalapha cinerea. Hitherto I have seen
only a very small kind in England.
Big Bat