148 
NATURE NOTES. 
BIRD LIFE IN JUNE. 
COUNTRY garden is peculiarly interesting at this- 
season from the number of young bird families which 
one may have under observation in quite a small area. 
Here my walks are made delightful by constant appari- 
tions of young birds in the hobbledehoy stage, to use rather an 
expressive term. Delightful scenes of maternal affection may 
be witnessed on the grass in front of one’s very windows. I 
have seen a young blackbird hobbling, or rather lurching, after 
its mother, shrieking with rage if its wants were not supplied 
last enough to suit its voracious appetite. Some young birds 
are much more fearful of man than others. 
On one occasion I found a young thrush able to fly sitting in 
a dead yew tree. It was such a pretty little thing, with fluffy 
tufts just above the eyes, and every part of its plumage so 
bright and fresh. I walked close up to it and lifted my finger 
to stroke it, when behold it opened its beak in a gape as though 
it would take in my finger and myself as well. On the other 
hand, a nest full of young robins became violently excited when 
I approached them, and would jump up and snap like jacks-in- 
the-box, and try and peck at my intrusive finger. 
I have seen few prettier sights than a family of green- 
finches balancing themselves on the slender swaying points of 
a cedar tree ; the male bird, glorious in green and gold, keeping 
up a continuous “ wheeze, whee-e-z,” and the four or five 
greenish-brown youngsters, hardly to be distinguished from 
their mother, so well-grown and strong are they. Another 
pretty sight was afforded when three or four young starlings 
poked their grey heads and yellow throats from a hole in an old 
apple tree wreathed with honeysuckle, formerly the abode of a 
lesser spotted woodpecker. Some birds are thinking of and 
preparing for a second brood, and the cuckoos are again busy 
searching for hedge-sparrows’ and other nests wherein to deposit 
their eggs. 
The chorus in the mornings is not so full and varied now, 
but yet many songs are heard in the garden, especially after rain. 
The thrushes seem indefatigable in carolling their exquisite 
song, the easiest to put into words I know. The nightingale, 
which can have had very little sleep during May, singing as he 
did all day and night upon the lawn close to our windows, has 
at last ceased to sing ; somewhere in that thick undergrowth, 
through which I have hunted in vain, getting hot, cross and 
most frightfully nettled, is his nest, filled with hungry youngsters 
whose wants vnist be supplied. No wonder he has no time for 
song now ! And how we miss that wonderful song — how silent 
the night seems without it, that wonderful liquid trill, so 
different from any other song, divided into short exquisite 
phrases, each full of music, yet each so different. Now the 
nights seem silent in spite of the unceasing jarring note of the 
