Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Bird-life in London. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![“ I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush Sing hymns of rapture, while I drank the sound With joy ; and oft, an unintending guest I watched her secret toils from day to day : How true she warped the moss to form her nest, And modelled it within with wood and clay.” But I believe I am right in saying that in the bird-world, save, perhaps, in the case where (like the domestic hen) the female almost entirely undertakes the bringing up of the young, the male is the talkative member of the family, and the silent one is the female ! Poetasters seem to like to depict the female bird as the rapturous singer ; but if, as I think is the case, I am right in my contention that, among birds, the female sex is de- ficient in song, and the males alone are gifted with singing powers, it is rather strange to find such errors in poets like Clare and Scott. From my earliest childhood, I have been quite familiar with bird-life. My father was a lover of birds; and I was born and spent my early years in a sea-side and woodland district of Devon- shire which, being then quite out of the world, was a perfect paradise of feathered songsters: where, save the nightingale—at whose absence from the region I have often wondered—we had, I think, nearly every bird that comes to our shores. One of my earliest boyish feats, in which I was proud to be told I was very skilful, was that “hooting to the owls,” such as Wordsworth describes in these lines :— “ At evening, when the earliest stars began To move along the edges of the hills, Rising or setting, would he stand alone Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake. And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth Uplifted, he, as through an instrument, Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls, That they might answer him : and they would shout Across the watery vale, and shout again, Responsive to his peal, with quivering peals, And long halloos and screams and echoes loud Redoubled and redoubled ; concourse wild Of jocund mirth and din.” More interesting than this, and even more certain of response were the mimic cooings to the ring-doves, made by puttin- m hands m a different way. To these cooings the doves^ would hl —r and Stlil hlSher’ ti]1 they became quite excited m Wl”Tc As bearinS the sense off in bids to which references have been made in this Mae-arin^ i j sometimes to think the birds enjoyed the contest nST. t’ 1 would do in cooing to each orier* Often when the cushTdov^ have been cooing over my head in St. James’s Pari- T h™ i sorely tempted to try my boyish feats ™H * \h , e been doves would coo to me still. y ’ and see defter the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2245827x_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
