It would be dull at the window but for the discovery I have made in the banksia over the arched trellis which stands, for no purpose at all, across the garden walk that runs round the roses. Here I strongly suspect the brown bird has an establishment, and a sitting hen. So long as I myself sat in the garden I never guessed it, he was too clever; but he did not dream, I suppose, that I would take to spying upon him in ambush like this, and from here his conduct looks most husbandly. The brown bird joined us one afternoon about a fortnight ago, while we were having tea on the verandah. He perched on a flower-pot, and hinted, in the most engaging way, that the ground was baked and worms were scarce, and we made him feel so welcome to crumbs that he has constantly dropped in upon us since. He is most venturesome with us; he will run under our chairs and under the table, and he loves to slip in and out of hiding among the flower-pots. He goes with little leaps and bounds, like a squirrel; and he whistles with such melody that one might very well think him a thrush. I thought him a thrush, until one afternoon Tiglath-Pileser said aggressively, “I don’t believe that bird is a thrush.” “Pray, then,” said I, “what is he?” “He belongs, nevertheless,” said Tiglath-Pileser judicially, “to the _Passeres_.” “If I asked your name,” said Delia, who was there, “I should not be grateful to be told that you were one of the primates,” and we laughed at the master of the house. “Wait a bit,” said he, “I should call him a robin.” “He’s got no red breast,” I brought forth, out of the depth of my ignorance. “He has a reddish spot under each ear,” said Tiglath-Pileser, “and mark how his tail turns up.” “I am no ornithologist,” I said. “His tail turns up.” “How little one realizes,” quoth Thisbe, pensively, “that a bird has ears.” “I think,” said Tiglath-Pileser, “that I can decide this matter,” and disappeared into the house. “He has gone to get a book,” said Delia, “that will settle _you_, dear lady, you and your thrush,” and presently he came out triumphant, as she said, with “Wanderings of a Naturalist in India.” “‘Although differing altogether in the colour of its plumage from the European robin,’” he read aloud, “‘there is great similarity in their habits. It frisks before the door, and picks up crumbs, jerking its tail as it hops along. How often have associations of home been brought to mind by seeing this pretty little warbler pursuing its gambols before the door of an Eastern bungalow!’” “Well,” said I, “not often, because of course we didn’t recognize it, but in future they always will be,” and at that moment the pretty little warbler put himself in profile on the paling before us, and threw out his little waistcoat, and threw back his little head and whistled, and we all cried out that he had established his identity, there could not be any doubt of it, in face of that brave and dainty attitude. There are some things a bird never could pick up.