The Statement That The Redstart Is A Mimic Is To Be Met With
In Many Books About Birds.
I rather think that in jerking out
these various little broken notes which end its strain,
whether he only squeaks or succeeds in producing a pure sound,
he is striving to recover his own lost song rather than to
imitate the songs of other birds.
So much entertainment did I find at that spot, so grateful did
it seem in its openness after long confinement in the lower
thickly wooded country, that I practically spent the day
there. At all events the best time for walking was gone when
I quitted it, and then I could think of no better plan than to
climb down into the old long untrodden road, or channel, again
just to see where it would lead me. After all, I said, my
time is my own, and to abandon the old way I have walked in so
long without discovering the end would be a mistake. So I
went on in it once more, and in about twenty minutes it came
to an end before a group of old farm buildings in a hollow in
the woods. The space occupied by the buildings was quite
walled round and shut in by a dense growth of trees and
bushes; and there was no soul there and no domestic animal.
The place had apparently been vacant many years, and the
buildings were in a ruinous condition, with the roofs falling
in.
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