[24]In common with other Woodpeckers, as Mr. H. Wharton has reminded me in the Academy. It is indeed very doubtful whether this striking bird was known either to Aristotle or Pliny; it is now an uncommon bird in Italy, and is properly an inhabitant of northern Europe. But when Italy was covered with forest (cp. Theophrastus, Hist. Plant, v. 8. 2) it must have been known to the country people.
[25]The closer acquaintance has been made, and I have learnt the song of this bird, which is not unlike that of the Lesser White-throat described in [Chapter II]. Of all the warblers I know, this is the most restless and difficult to observe when once the leaves are fully out. It is the only bird, I think, which has completely baffled me during a whole morning spent in pursuing the song without once getting a fair look at the singer. (June, 1889.)
[26]Mr. Seebohm’s British Birds is a remarkable exception to this tendency.
[27]This kindly patron of birds is E. D. Lockwood, Esq., late of the Bengal Civil Service, and author of Natural History, Sport, and Travel in India.
[28]They came, but found the hole occupied by the ubiquitous Starling. He again gave way to a pair of bold Blue-tits, who brought up their young here, flitting about the garden like large blue butterflies.
[29]For exactly four years I saw no other Black Redstart in Oxfordshire. But on November 5, 1888, another caught my eye within half a mile of the spot described in the text. This time it was another new and ugly wall that he patronized, transferring his attention now and then to the cabbages in a cottage garden hard by.
[30]The discovery in Germany (see the Ibis for April, 1889) of a Cuckoo hatching its own egg should put all English observers on the look-out. We have taken it too much for granted that such a thing could not happen.
[31]Col. Barrow tells me that now (August, 1886) they have come to prefer bread to nuts, and will leave the latter so long as they can get the former.
[32]When does he leave us? On Aug. 23, 1886, I saw an astonishing number of Flycatchers all on the same side of an orchard, and felt sure, from their restlessness, that they had assembled, as swallows do, in view of migration. On the 24th I went to S. Wales, where, during a whole week, I only saw one, though they were abundant up to that time. Letters from ornithological friends led me to believe that the birds have almost entirely disappeared from South and East England by about Sept. 12; and Mr. Seebohm is probably right in giving the first week of September as the usual date of their departure. How much less we know of the departure than of the arrival of birds, so quietly do they slip away!
[33]Mr. Seebohm (Brit. Birds, i. 325) tells us of a quiet little warble, so low as to be scarcely heard at a few yards’ distance; but this I have never yet succeeded in catching.