ling in church steeples
and in holes in walls; several thrushes resort to sheds to nest; and
jackdaws breed in the crannies of the old architecture, and this in a
much milder climate than our own.

They have in that country no birds that answer to our tiny, lisping
wood-warblers,--genus _Dendroica,_--nor to our vireos, _Vireonidoe._
On the other hand, they have a larger number of field-birds and
semi-game-birds. They have several species like our robin; thrushes
like him, and some of them larger, as the ring ouzel, the missel-thrush,
the fieldfare, the throstle, the redwing, White's thrush, the
blackbird,--these, besides several species in size and habits more like
our wood thrush.

Several species of European birds sing at night besides the true
nightingale,--not fitfully and as if in their dreams, as do a few of
our birds, but continuously. They make a business of it. The sedge-bird
ceases at times as if from very weariness; but wake the bird up, says
White, by throwing a stick or stone into the bushes, and away it goes
again in full song. We have but one real nocturnal songster, and that
is the mockingbird. One can see how this habit might increase among the
birds of a long-settled country like England. With sounds and voices
about them, why should they be silent, too? The danger of betraying
themselves to their natural enemies would be less than in our woods.

That their birds are more quarrelsome and pugnacious than ours I
think evident. Our thrushes are especially mild-mannered, but the
missel-thrush is very bold and saucy, and has been known to fly in the
face of persons who have disturbed the sitting bird. No jay nor magpie
nor crow can stand before him. The Welsh call him master of the coppice,
and he welcomes a storm with such a vigorous and hearty song that in
some countries he is known as storm-cock. He sometimes kills the young of
other birds and eats eggs,--a very unthrushlike trait. The whitethroat
sings with crest erect, and attitudes of warning and defiance. The
hooper is a great bully; so is the greenfinch. The wood-grouse--now
extinct, I believe--has been known to attack people in the woods. And
behold the grit and hardihood of that little emigrant or exile to our
shores, the English sparrow! Our birds have their tilts and spats also;
but the only really quarrelsome members in our family are confined to
the flycatchers, as the kingbird and the great crested flycatcher. None
of our song-birds are bu