In August, When The Spring Begins To Infect Their Blood, They Repair
To The Trees At Intervals During The Day, Where They Sit Perched And
Motionless For An Hour Or Longer, All Singing Together.
This singing
time was when the peach trees were in blossom, and it was invariably
in the peach trees they settled and could be seen, the little yellow
birds in thousands amid the millions of pink blossoms, pouring out
their wonderful music.
One of the most delightful bird sounds or noises to be heard in
England is the concert-singing of a flock of several hundreds, and
sometimes of a thousand or more linnets in September and October, and
even later in the year, before these great congregations have been
broken up or have migrated. The effect produced by the small field
finch of the pampas was quite different. The linnet has a little
twittering song with breaks in it and small chirping sounds, and when
a great multitude of birds sing together the sound at a distance of
fifty or sixty yards is as of a high wind among the trees, but on a
nearer approach the mass of sound resolves itself into a tangle of
thousands of individual sounds, resembling that of a great concourse
of starlings at roosting time, but more musical in character. It is as
if hundreds of fairy minstrels were all playing on stringed and wind
instruments of various forms, every one intent on his own performance
without regard to the others.
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