. Birds in town & village, by . ngth, thena small complaining cry again, and at intervals,a fresh burst of melody. I have remarked thesame thing in other singing birds, species inwhich the harsh grating or piercing sounds thatproperly express violent emotions of a painfulkind, have been nearly or quite lost. In the night-ingale, this part of the birds language has lostits original character, and has dwindled to some-thing very small. Solicitude, fear, anger, are ex-pressed with sounds that are mere lispings com-pared with those emitted by the bird when sing-ing. It is worthy of r
. Birds in town & village, by . ngth, thena small complaining cry again, and at intervals,a fresh burst of melody. I have remarked thesame thing in other singing birds, species inwhich the harsh grating or piercing sounds thatproperly express violent emotions of a painfulkind, have been nearly or quite lost. In the night-ingale, this part of the birds language has lostits original character, and has dwindled to some-thing very small. Solicitude, fear, anger, are ex-pressed with sounds that are mere lispings com-pared with those emitted by the bird when sing-ing. It is worthy of remark that some of themost highly developed melodists—and I am nowthinking of the mocking-birds—never, in -momentsof extreme agitation, fall into this confusion anduse singing notes that express agreeable emo-tions, to express such as are painful. But in the BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 17 mocking-bird the primitive harsh and gratingcries have not been lost nor softened to soundshardly to be distinguished from those that areemitted by way of Ill By this time all the birds were breeding, somealready breeding a second time. And now I be-gan to suspect that they were not quite so un-disturbed as the old dame had led me to believe;that they had not found a paradise in the villageafter all. One morning, as I moved softly alongthe hedge in my nightingales lane, all at onceI heard, in the old grassy orchard, to which itformed a boundary, swishing sounds of scuttlingfeet and half-suppressed exclamations of alarm;then a crushing through the hedge, and out, al-most at my feet, rushed and leaped and tumbledhalf-a-dozen urchins, who had suddenly beenfrightened from a bird-nesting raid. Clothestorn, hands and faces scratched with thorns, hat-less, their tow-coloured hair all disordered orstanding up like a white crest above their brownfaces, rounded eyes staring—what an extraor-dinarily wild appearance they had! I was back 18 BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 19 in very old times, in the Britain of a t
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1920
