Attractive Qualities.—However agreeable this bird may be in the room, from its good humour, agility, gaiety, and song, it does not deserve the name of winter nightingale, which it bears in some places; its song is too simple and short; it is a little couplet, composed of a strain of the lark and one of the wren. The sounds tchondi, hondi, hondi are repeated frequently and for a long time, always descending a sixth, and gradually diminishing in power. This song is accompanied with an uninterrupted movement of the wings and tail, and lasts through the year, except at the moulting season. Some young ones, reared in confinement, will, if placed beside a fine singing bird, learn enough of its song to embellish their own. But, whatever may be asserted on the subject, they never succeed in imitating the nightingale. When the dunnock disputes with its fellow captives for a place or for food its anger evaporates in a song, like the crested lark and the wagtail.
THE RED-BREAST.
Motacilla rubecula, Linnæus; Le Rouge-gorge, Buffon; Das Rothkelchen, Bechstein.
The red-breast is almost universally known in Europe. It is five inches and three quarters long, two and a quarter of which belong to the tail. The beak is five lines in length, and horn brown, with the lower base and the inside yellow; the iris is deep brown; the shanks, eleven lines in height, are of the same colour; the forehead, cheeks, and under part of the body, from the beak to the bottom of the breast, are orange red; the upper part of the body and the wing-coverts dingy olive; the first wing-coverts have at their tip a little triangular spot.
The female, which is rather smaller, is not so orange-coloured on the forehead, and this colour is not so bright upon the breast; the shanks are a purplish brown; yellow spots are almost always absent from the wing-coverts; the old females alone having very small yellow marks.
The males of the first year, which are caught in the spring, very much resemble the females: they have but very small yellow spots, and sometimes none; the breast is saffron yellow; but the feet are the distinguishing mark, being always very dark brown.
This species has varieties, as the white red-breast and the variegated red-breast. In confinement, by sometimes removing successively the quill-feathers and tail-feathers out of the moulting season, they will at last be replaced by white ones. These birds are very pretty; I have had several in this way, but I have observed that these last feathers are so weak and delicate that they are easily injured and broken. This repeated operation must give pain to the little creatures, on which account it should be avoided.
Habitation.—When wild, these birds are found in abundance during the period of migration, on hedges and bushes, but in summer they must be sought in the woods. “This retreat,” it has been said, “is necessary to their happiness: the male is engrossed with the society of his mate, all other company is troublesome; he pursues eagerly the birds of his species, and drives them from the district he has chosen for himself; the same bush never contains two pairs of these birds.” The red-breasts return to us (in Germany) about the middle of March[92]; they stop for about a fortnight in the hedges, and then proceed into the woods. In October they return towards the bushes, which they busily search as they travel, and proceed gradually to their destination. Some delay their departure till November, some will even remain here and there throughout the winter, but generally to their cost, as their life is usually sacrificed by these delays. Necessity then forces them to draw near to houses, dunghills, and stables, where they are generally caught by men or cats, or die of hunger and cold if the frost is long and severe, and the snow deep. Care must be taken in hard weather not to transport them suddenly into a warm room, the rapid change from cold to heat invariably kills them. They should at first be put in a cold room, and be gradually accustomed to warm air; with these precautions they will do as well as those which are caught in the autumn or spring.