46 
PICTURES OF BIRD LIFE. 
to those of any of our warblers, the nightingale excepted. Blackcaps mostly haunt 
gardens and orchards; while they warble, their throats are wonderfully distended.” 
The Blackcap is five inches and a half in length. The top and back of the 
head is jet-black in the male, but reddish or chocolate colour in the female ; the 
upper plumage, wings, and tail are ash-grey, shading into olive ; the under plumage 
is a lighter grey. The female is larger than the male, and the young birds have 
not so conspicuous a hood as she has. Occasionally the Blackcap spends the winter 
in the British Islands ; and (says Professor Newton) “ it would, singularly enough, 
seem that in winter some, if not all of the males, lose their black caps, and have 
their heads coloured like those of the females.” About the middle of April, but 
never till the larches are green, “ the pilgrim gray with sable head ” appears in his 
favourite haunts. White gives 26th March to 4th May as the times within which 
he is first heard. And he departs before the middle of September, when so many 
of his family also leave our shores. The males seem to arrive, as does the 
nightingale, before the females, and they are at first timid and shy, seeking to 
conceal themselves. It has then the trick of practising its song in a low tone, 
“ recording ” as the bird-fanciers call it, a habit which often leads to its capture. 
After a few days it obtains its full powers of song. It is said, like many other 
powerful songsters, to be a mimic, or “ polyglot,” as White quaintly termed it, at 
times. Another curious trait in its history is that it shares with its mate the 
duties of incubation, and is then very fearless, but not so much as the hen-bird, 
who will not mind an observer coming quite close to her. Its food consists of 
insects, berries, and fruit, especially ivy-berries, raspberries, and red currants. Sweet 
says, “When it first arrives in this country its chief food is the early-ripened berries 
of the ivy, and where these are there the Blackcaps are first to be heard singing 
their melodious and varied song. By the time the ivy-berries are over, the little 
green larvae of the small moths will be getting plentiful, rolled up in the young 
shoots and leaves ; this then is their chief food until the strawberries and cherries 
become ripe; after that there is no want of fruit or berries till their return, and 
there is no sort of fruit or berry that is eatable or wholesome that they will refuse. 
After they have cleared the elder-berries in autumn, they immediately leave us.” 
This bird visits and breeds in all our counties. It is local, but not scarce 
in Ireland, while in Scotland it may be called rare, though its nest has been found 
in the south, and the bird itself has occurred so far north as Caithness and the 
Orkneys. It visits also every country of Europe, though scarce in Sweden and 
Norway. It breeds in the Holy Land, and is a bird of passage in Egypt, Nubia, 
