Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/38

12 toneless notes, to which the voice breaks from the song. It is suggestive of what would be heard if one of our rich basses concluded every phrase by jodelling hysterically, like a Swiss. The same incident is very noticeable in the Mistle Thrush, whose very brief snatches of full-toned song (consisting of from two to four or five notes) are followed by a few high discordant sounds. In the Common Thrush this break hardly ever occurs as distinctly as in the Blackbird; but, whereas in the Blackbird the sounds are never given except after the full notes, in the Thrush they may constitute the entirety of several successive phrases; and this is especially the case when two Thrushes are about to fight.

In the Nightingale the terminal break in the voice is reduced to an occasional very brief high note. Bechstein observed this, and has carefully rendered it in a very good syllabification of the bird's song, from which the following is an extract:— "Tio, tio, tio tix. Tzu, tzu, tzu tzi. Dzorre, dzorre, hi." This little final note is never repeated or prolonged.

The Blackcap has distinct "falsetto" notes, which precede the full notes and never follow them. I have heard the Blackcap in September uttering a little song of the false notes, without any of the usual full notes.

The Lesser Whitethroat, like the Blackcap, commences its song with harsh notes; and the succeeding full tones, lacking the variety of the Blackcap's warble, are given at one pitch, and form a strain like that of the Cirl Bunting, but more musical.

In the Willow Wren there is a rapid succession of high notes at the beginning of the song, quite distinct from the immediately succeeding sweet full tones. The initial notes are given at about the same pitch. There is never one of these false or harsh notes at the end of the song.

The Robin and Starling seem not to revert to infantile cries in song, except that the former, in August and September, makes great use of the call-note and of the "distress-note," and sometimes forms brief phrases of these cries only. In September the young Thrushes twitter a good deal, but even at this season they sometimes utter full notes. In mid-September last I heard three Thrushes, near Eltham, singing a few very full notes. Similarly,