Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/198

140 often find it difficult, and in not a few cases impossible, to recognise a bird merely by its call. The plaintive notes of the Willow-Warbler and of the Chiffchaff are to our ears very closely akin, so, too, are those of the Marsh-Warbler and of the Reed- Warbler, and there is a great resemblance between the hissing sound produced by the two Whitethroats. In Co. Donegal I have been deceived by the spring-call of the Chaffinch which, owing possibly to the humidity of the atmosphere, is there almost indistinguishable from the corresponding note of the Greenfinch. The Yellow Bunting and the Cirl Bunting frequently make use of a similar note, so do the Curlew and the Whimbrel. In fact, numberless instances could be quoted in which notes appear to us identical, and, as a rule, the more closely related the species, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish the sounds—alike in plumage, alike in behaviour, alike in emotional manifestation, it would be surprising if they were not alike in voice. But the moment we pass from the call-notes to a consideration of the songs we are faced with a very remarkable fact, for not only are these readily distinguished, but in many cases they bear no resemblance in any single characteristic. What could be more unlike than the songs of the Willow-Warbler and of the Chiffchaff, of the Marsh-Warbler and the Reed- Warbler, or of the Yellow Bunting and the Cirl Bunting?

Now when different individuals collect in flocks at certain seasons, they assist one another