There was a blackbird singing somewhere in the budding thicket, and I managed to get quite close to his perch without being seen. To the songs of birds like the thrush, the skylark, the robin, you may listen for five minutes; and, beautiful as they are, in that short space of time you will have learnt all that the song has to tell. But the blackbird’s song is very different. It has an endless succession of changes in rhythm, power and quality. You may listen to it for an hour, and never hear a phrase repeated in its exact form. The difference between the blackbird’s song, and that of nearly all other birds, is the difference between the singing of a happy schoolgirl and that of a prima donna. While both have melody, one alone has finished artistry. Until you have stayed in a wood with a blackbird a whole sunny April morning through, and got from him the truth of things as he alone can tell it, you do not really know that spring is here. Now, by the riverside copse, as I leaned on the old, lichen-gilded timbers of the fence, listening to the pure, unhurried notes, the fact that it was really April at last was suddenly borne in upon me. In the daybreak and eventide choruses of birds, the thrushes, by dint of sheer numbers and vehemence, easily overpower all other singers. Now and again you can catch and isolate a matchless phrase of blackbird music; but to hear the song in perfection, you must wait until the day is wearing on towards noon, and he seeks solitude for his singing. If bird-song is a language, then the blackbird must be the supreme orator of the woods. Though you understand not a syllable of what he is pouring forth, there is no doubt of its ever-varying meaning. In the midst of a succession of quite simple phrases, each consisting of three or four notes at the most, he suddenly gives you a passage whose melodious complexity is almost bewildering. He constantly varies the pace of his delivery. He embellishes his song with grace-notes—beautiful silver-chiming triplets in the midst of his lowest, most leisurely strains. There is emphasis, attack, a sort of blustering use of sheer power of utterance; or he may run over a slow, quiet tune at his lightest tongue-tip. At times, indeed, it is well-nigh impossible to believe that you are not listening to two birds together, of totally different qualities of voice, alternating their melodies. How long I should have tarried there, furtively renewing this old acquaintance, I know not; but it seems my cover was incomplete, and the song came to its usual termination. It stopped short in the midst of one of its brightest stanzas, and I knew my presence had been observed. The blackbird made off. There was first the defiant, yet fearsome cluck-cluck-cluck until he was clear of the bushes and free to fly, and then away he went through the sunshine to the far bank of the river, hurling over his shoulder as he went the usual mocking laughter-peal. II