The most musical singer we heard was the blackcap warbler.  To my ear its song seemed more musical than that of the nightingale.  It was astonishingly powerful for so small a bird; in volume and continuity it does not come up to the songs of the thrushes and of certain other birds, but in quality, as an isolated bit of melody, it can hardly be surpassed.

Among the minor singers the robin was noticeable.  We all know this pretty little bird from the books, and I was prepared to find him as friendly and attractive as he proved to be, but I had not realized how well he sang.  It is not a loud song, but very musical and attractive, and the bird is said to sing practically all through the year.  The song of the wren interested me much, because it was not in the least like that of our house wren, but, on the contrary, like that of our winter wren.  The theme is the same as the winter wren’s, but the song did not seem to me to be as brilliantly musical as that of the tiny singer of the North Woods.  The sedge warbler sang in the thick reeds a mocking ventriloquial lay, which reminded me at times of the less pronounced parts of our yellow-breasted chat’s song.  The cuckoo’s cry was singularly attractive and musical, far more so than the rolling, many times repeated, note of our rain-crow.

We did not reach the inn at Brockenhurst until about nine o’clock, just at nightfall, and a few minutes before that we heard a nightjar.  It did not sound in the least like either our whip-poor-will or our night-hawk, uttering a long-continued call of one or two syllables, repeated over and over.  The chaffinch was very much in evidence, continually chaunting its unimportant little ditty.  I was pleased to see the bold, masterful missel thrush, the stormcock as it is often called; but this bird breeds and sings in the early spring, when the weather is still tempestuous, and had long been silent when we saw it.  The starlings, rooks, and jackdaws did not sing, and their calls were attractive merely as the calls of our grackles are attractive; and the other birds that we heard sing, though they played their part in the general chorus, were performers of no especial note, like our tree-creepers, pine warblers, and chipping sparrows.  The great spring chorus had already begun to subside, but the woods and fields were still vocal with beautiful bird music, the country was very lovely, the inn as comfortable as possible, and the bath and supper very enjoyable after our tramp; and altogether I passed no pleasanter twenty-four hours during my entire European trip.

Ten days later, at Sagamore Hill, I was among my own birds, and was much interested as I listened to and looked at them in remembering the notes and actions of the birds I had seen in England.  On the evening of the first day I sat in my rocking-chair on the broad veranda, looking across the Sound towards the glory of the sunset.  The thickly grassed hillside sloped down in front of me to a belt of forest from