Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/86

62 times on the top of a bush, sometimes low down. When the sun first rises they are fond of sitting on dead branches in order to preen their feathers. If when at the top of a bush he happens to see you, he dives down into the middle and disappears immediately, only to reappear presently, if there is nothing to alarm him, crawling up the middle of the bush and walking along the branches until he gets back to his original perch, when he will again commence to sing. The habit they have of crawling up the bushes is so like that of a Field-Mouse, that I have more than once mistaken the one for the other, the Field-Mouse also being very fond of creeping up the stem of bushes.

The female seems to be more fond of walking along the ground than the male, and when disturbed off her nest slips quietly down amongst the thick undergrowth that generally surrounds the nest, shortly to return providing there is no noise or movement to frighten her.

I have never heard the female utter a note of any kind, though I have many times watched both when mating, and when the young were hatched. She is more difficult to watch than the male, on account of her habit of creeping along the ground; in fact, the only times I have seen the females at all lively is for the first hour after dawn during May and June. At that time the male and female chase one another, and I have seen the female when tired of this sitting quietly on a dead branch of a nut bush, but by sunrise she was off back to her nest. The male in this county sings at most hours of the day and night until the female begins to sit, when he is almost silent, and remains so till the young are out of the nest, then he commences to sing again—that is to say, from the middle of May till about the third week in June.

This habit is curious—in no other bird have I noticed it—and I should be interested to know if others have observed the same thing. I said almost silent, because I once heard one singing very quietly on a hot afternoon early in June. From the time he arrives till the middle of May he sings continuously in the morning, and certainly at times he is very hard to locate, owing to his note sounding farther off than it really is, and vice versâ, the result of a habit he has of turning his head from side to side when singing. He is also fond of singing at night; but I cannot