The thrush, when he wishes to approach the house, flies first to the cover of these gooseberries; then, after reconnoitring a few minutes, comes out on the green and gradually works his way across it to the stone-pitching, and so along under the very window. The blackbird comes almost as often to the lawn, but it is in a different way. His manner is that of a bold marauder, conscious that he has no right, and aware that a shot from an ambuscade may lay him low, but defiantly risking the danger. He perches first on a bush, or on the garden wall, under the sheltering boughs of the lime trees, at a distance of some twenty yards; then, waiting till all is clear, he makes a desperate rush for the fruit trees or the lawn. The moment he has succeeded in violently seizing some delicious morsel off he goes, uttering a loud chuckle--half as a challenge, half as a vent for his pent-up anxiety. This peculiar chuckle is so well known by all the other birds as a note of alarm that every one in the garden immediately move; his position, if only a yard or two. When you are stealing down the side of the hedgerow, endeavouring to get near enough to observe the woodpecker in a tree, or with a gun to shoot a pigeon, the great anxiety is lest you startle a blackbird. If he thinks you have not seen him, he is cunning enough to slip out the other side noiselessly and fly down beside the hedge just above the ground for some distance. He then crosses the field to a hedge on the other side, and, just as he safely lands himself in a thick hawthorn bush a hundred yards away, defiantly utters his cry. The pigeon or the woodpecker will instantly glance round; but, the cry being at a distance, if you keep still a minute or two they will resume their occupation. But if you should disturb the blackbird on the side of the bank next you, where he knows you must have seen or heard him, or if he is obliged to come out on your side of the hedge, then he makes the meadow ring with his alarm-note, and immediately away goes pigeon or woodpecker, thrushes fly further down the hedge, and the rabbits feeding in the grass lift up their heads and, seeing you, rush to their burrows. In this way the blackbird acts as a general sentinel. He has two variations of this cry. One he uses when just about to change his feeding ground and visit another favourite corner across the field; it is as much as to say, "Take notice, all you menials; I, the king of the hedge, am coming." The other is a warning, and will very often set two or three other blackbirds calling in the same way, whose existence till then was unsuspected. These calls are quite distinct from his song.