GLIMPSES OF EUROPEAN BIRDS. 83 
Florence to Venice. From Venice our course lay among the 
Tyrolese Alps, then through a most beautiful and fertile coun¬ 
try, beyond which we crossed .he vast plain environing the 
capital of Austria. Being ourselves “ on the wing ” or sight¬ 
seeing all through this prosperous, fertile, and well wooded 
country, where, by the way, forestry has been reduced to a sci¬ 
ence and where we neither saw a dead tree nor the dead limb 
of a tree, it was not until we reached Munich after a swift run 
from Vienna, that we had opportunity for further observations. 
The morning after our arrival we heard a loud and cheerful 
song, resembling in some respects that of our robin, but with 
a more decidedly thrushlike quality. Looking out we saw 
our bird perched on a chimney top. We at once recognized 
him as the European blackbird or black thrush (Turdus 
merula), corrrsponding to our robin, or, to quote Burroughs, 
“our robin cut in ebony.” He is the merle of the English 
poets. As is the case with many European birds his common 
name, blackbird, suggests to an American a different order of 
birds from that to which he really belongs. Our blackbird is a 
starling, while that is a thrush. About the size of our robin, he 
flirts his tail like a true thrush, pulls up angleworms like a 
robin, and scratches among the leaves like a thrush again — 
a sort of thrush-robin or robin-thrush. 
At this city we also made the acquaintance of two of the 
common European birds, the swallow (Hirundo rustica) and 
the swift (Cypselus apus). The common European swallow 
looks very like our barn swallow, having the same long quills 
in the outer tail feathers, but, unlike ours, he builds in chimneys. 
The swift, curiously enough, does not build in chimneys but on 
cliffs or walls, like our eave swallow. These swifts are larger 
than ours and have a respectable tail in place of the “ paint 
brush ” apology for that appendage owned by their American 
cousins. The sounds they utter are also different, not a rapid 
chatter, but, in the words of Mr. Ralph Hoffmann, “ a curious 
screech, fine and rasping, resembling a bat’s squeak.” 
On the 15th of June we invaded the mysterious precincts of 
