Chirps and 
Chatter. 
(99) THE BIRD WORLD. 
A Thrush’s Prelude. 
The following interesting account of 
a Thrush’s song appeared recently in the 
“ Manchester City News ” :—“ I have 
been listening during the past week to 
a Thrush that gives forth a prelude to 
his song of a form and of a quality of 
tone such as I have never before heard 
a Thrush deliver. The prelude con¬ 
sists of a strictly monotone staccato note 
at the pitch of about middle C, repeated 
without variety of speed or emphasis at 
the rate of some three or four notes a 
second. The notes arrange themselves 
in groups of four, with an abbreviated 
bar at the end, the fourfold groups 
counting sometimes up to four, five, and 
even six in number. Frequently, indeed 
—and this was the case when I first 
heard him—the bird confines himself to 
repetitions of his monotone phrase of 
arbitrary length, and follows the 
sequence with no single fragment of 
legitimate song. None whose attention 
I have called to the prelude, as I inade¬ 
quately designate it, could believe that 
the bird producing it was a Thrush at 
all; and some, when the song has fol¬ 
lowed the prelude, have been ready to 
maintain that there were two birds in 
the case. I myself was deceived by the 
prelude, and I stalked the bird into full 
view in, or rather on, a thickly-foliaged 
lime tree, convinced that I was 
on the point of securing fame for 
myself by the discovery, literally, 
of a rara avis. 
A Great Disappointment. 
Just at the very moment that I was 
focussing my field-glasses on the 
bird, and was mentally fashioning the 
paragraph that was to startle the world 
of enthusiastic naturalists, the full¬ 
chested tenor threw off his vocal dis¬ 
guise and burst into robust and varied 
song, leaping to it from his well-tested 
dominant. There seemed, to my 
sensitive fancy, a suspicion of roguish 
chuckling in his manly roulades; but I 
have discovered since where his love in 
patience sits in her self-built cottage of 
clay and thatch, in the shelter of a 
trim-clipped yew; and I know, there¬ 
fore, that every phrase of his lustily 
passionate serenade was delivered in pro¬ 
test of his proud interest in another, 
and was innocent of wasting a single 
satirical note upon me. I have 
wondered, nevertheless, if his ladylove 
recognises him in his prelude as well as 
in his song; and I write this note to ask 
if any of your skilled and observant 
correspondents can tell me if this ear- 
arresting prelude of the Thrush—to 
which I was listening again ten minutes 
ago—is a rare or a familiar pheno¬ 
menon ? ” 
Nightingale in Pembrokeshire. 
Has the Nightingale reached Pem¬ 
brokeshire? This most beautiful of all 
British songsters has during the past few 
years been extending its sphere of in¬ 
fluence in Great Britain, both north and 
west. It now breeds regularly in East 
and Mid-Glamorgan and parts of 
Breconshire, but there does not appear 
any good authority for saying that it has 
ever been heard west of Bridgend. It 
has been reported several times from 
the Clyne Valley, in the Swansea dis¬ 
trict, but that it has actually been heard 
there is doubted by some local ornith¬ 
ologists. During the present summer it 
has been reported by several people as 
having been heard in North Pembroke¬ 
shire. 
The Eider Duck. 
On many of the islands around our 
coasts there are large patches of sea 
campion, and among the white flowers 
we find many Eider Ducks. Everyone 
knows an Eider-down quilt, yet few 
have seen the Duck from which this 
light, warmth-giving down is obtained. 
Eight eggs are often laid in scratchings 
in the ground, and then, as incubation 
proceeds, the Duck plucks large quan¬ 
tities of down from her body and places 
this around, making a very cosy nest. 
One would think that, after taking so 
much trouble, the Duck was preparing 
a warm nest for her young ones, but as 
soon as these leave the shells they are 
led by their mother down to the sea, 
and never return to the bed of down. 
B 
