BIRD-LIFE IN LONDON. 
105 
“ I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush 
Sing hymns of rapture, while I drank the sound 
With joy ; and oft, an unintending guest 
I watched her secret toils from day to day : 
How true she warped the moss to form her nest. 
And modelled it within with wood and clay.” 
But I believe I am right in saying that in the bird-world, 
save, perhaps, in the case where (like the domestic hen) the 
female almost entirely undertakes the bringing up of the young, 
the male is the talkative member of the family, and the silent 
one is the female ! Poetasters seem to like to depict the female 
bird as the rapturous singer ; but if, as I think is the case, I am 
right in my contention that, among birds, the female sex is de- 
ficient in song, and the males alone are gifted with singing 
powers, it is rather strange to find such errors in poets like Clare 
and Scott. 
From my earliest childhood, I have been quite familiar with 
bird-life. My father was a lover of birds ; and I was born and 
spent my early years in a sea-side and woodland district of Devon- 
shire which, being then quite out of the world, was a perfect 
paradise of feathered songsters : where, save the nightingale — at 
whose absence from the region I have often wondered — we had, 
I think, nearly every bird that comes to our shores. One of my 
earliest boyish feats, in which I was proud to be told I was very 
skilful, was that “ hooting to the owls,” such as Wordsworth 
describes in these lines 
“ At evening, when the earliest stars began 
To move along the edges of the hills. 
Rising or setting, would he stand alone 
Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake. 
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands 
Pressed closely palm lo palm and to his mouth 
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument, 
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls. 
That they might answer him : and they would shout 
Across the watery vale, and shout again. 
Responsive to his peal, with quivering peals. 
And long halloos and screams and echoes loud 
Redoubled and redoubled ; concourse wild 
Of jocund mirth and din.” 
More interesting than this, and even more certain of response, 
were the mimic cooings to the ring-doves, made by putting my 
hands in a different way. To these cooings the doves would 
answer, higher and still higher, till they became quite excited 
over the mimic contest. As bearing on the sense of fun in birds, 
to which references have been made in this Magazine, I used 
sometimes to think the birds enjoyed the contest, just as two boys 
would do in cooing to each other. Often, when the cushat doves 
have been cooing over my head in St. James’s Park, I have been 
sorely tempted to try my boyish feats, and see whether the 
doves would coo to me still. 
