304 
VOICES OF BIRDS. 
probably will be found to preserve the same round of 
notes ; whatever is uttered seeming* the effusion of the 
moment. At times a strain will break out perfectly 
unlike any preceding* utterance, and we may wait a 
long* time without noticing* any repetition of it. During 
one spring an individual song thrush, frequenting a 
favourite copse, after a certain round of tune, trilled 
out most regularly some notes that conveyed so clearly 
the words, lady-bird ! lady-bird ! that every one 
remarked the resemblance. He survived the winter, 
and in the ensuing season the lady-bird l lady-bird l 
was still the burden of our evening song; it then 
ceased, and we never heard this pretty modulation more. 
Though merely an occasional strain, j^et 1 have noticed 
it elsewhere ; it thus appearing to be a favourite utter- 
ance. Harsh, strained, and tense as the notes of this 
bird are, yet they are pleasing from their variety. The 
voice of the blackbird is infinitely more mellow, but 
has much less variety, compass, or execution; and 
he, too, commences his carols with the morning light, 
persevering from hour to hour without effort, or any 
sensible faltering of voice. The cuckoo wearies us 
throughout some long May morning with the unceasing 
monotony of its song ; and though there are others as 
vociferous, yet it is the only bird 1 know that seems 
to suffer from the use of the organs of voice. Little 
exertion as the few notes it makes use of seem to 
require, yet, by the middle or end of June, it loses its 
utterance, becomes hoarse, and ceases from any farther 
essay of it. The croaking of the nightingale in June, 
or the end of May, is not apparently occasioned by the 
loss of voice, but a change of note — a change of object ; 
his song ceases when his mate has hatched her brood; 
vigilance, anxiety, caution, now succeed to harmony, 
and his croak is the hush, the warning of danger or 
suspicion to the infant charge and the mother bird. 
w But here I must close my notes of birds, lest their 
actions and their ways, so various and so pleasing, 
should lure me on to protract 
My tedious tale through many a page ; 
