Yellow Warbler
“With the nightingale, though less wonderful as singers, are to be classed the warblers, thirty or more species of which can be counted in Europe. All live on flies, caterpillars, small beetles, spiders, and larvæ of various kinds. Their nests are constructed with much art. Some nest in trees and hedges in our gardens; others prefer thickets and lonely groves; still others choose holes in tree trunks and walls. Others, again, build on piling that projects above the water in marshes; that is, they unite three or four slender reeds with [[248]]a ligature and build their nest on this swaying support. Others, finally, content themselves with a little hole in the ground. Among the best-known of these birds is the black-capped warbler, so named on account of the black hood that covers the top of the head and the nape of the neck. You remember it is one of the cuckoo’s victims, as was proved by the egg found a few days ago, in the nest at the foot of the garden. Then we must include the babbling warbler, lover of copses, orchards, and gardens; the little red warbler, which visits our fruit-trees and says, zip-zap, zip-zap, zip-zap; the marsh-warbler, which builds its nest among the marsh reeds; and the Alpine warbler, guest of chalets and tuneful songster of high, snowy mountains.
Wheatear
“Now let us look at the fallow-finch or whitetail, which flies from clod to clod in our fallow fields (whence its name of fallow-finch), and in flying spreads its white tail, a target for the huntsman and the reason for its second name. It is ash-colored on the back and reddish white underneath, with black wings and eyebrows. It frequents cultivated fields to catch the grubs turned up by the plow. Its nest, placed under a clod of turf, amid a pile of stones, or in a hole in some dry wall, is made of moss, grass, and feathers. The eggs, five or six in number, are light blue. The fallow-finch’s chosen [[249]]haunts are dry, rocky uplands, where it may be seen in the autumn in large flocks, flying from one rock to another and from one clod to another, keeping close to the ground.
“By the fallow-finch’s side let us place the stonechat, a little, lively, active bird always seen perched on the topmost branch of a bush or bramble, where it repeats, with frisky movements, its short cry of ooistratra, ooistratra. If from this place of observation it sees an insect on the ground, it flies down, seizes it, and returns in a trice to its perch by a short curving flight like that so characteristic of the shrike. Its plumage is brown, with red breast and black throat. The sides of the neck, together with the wings and the rump, are ornamented with white. Stonechats frequent hedges that border sown fields and dry pastures, and are never seen, any more than are fallow-finches, in damp lands along the banks of rivers. They build their nests, in which they lay five or six greenish-blue eggs, among the roots of bushes, in crevices in rocks, and among piles of stones.
European Robin
“I should count it almost a crime to omit here the robin redbreast, in my opinion the most pleasing of our smaller birds in its wide-awake manner, its gentle look, and its friendly curiosity, which makes it come and pick up the shepherd’s crumbs when he is [[250]]eating his lunch. At the first dawn of day it begins its lively song, uttering now and then a note or two that recall certain parts of the nightingale’s more elaborate performance. Who does not know its alert cry from the depths of some clump of bushes, treet, tee-ree-tee-teet, tee-reet, tee-ree-tee-teet, and its call to some passing member of its kin, oo-eep, oo-eep?
