The Technique of Song
Students of birds have become so ardent that the minutest point is not omitted. Here are two examples of the thorough- ness of observation. Thorburn, that most faithful of artists in this field, painted a picture of a cuckoo singing with its beak shut. The question at once arose: do cuckoos, or other birds, sing without opening the beak? It is not so easy as may be thought to make quite sure, but one observer, at any rate, of my acquaintance feels tolerably confident that he has refuted Thorburn, that the cuckoo opens its bill to let out that clear, if sometimes irritating, major third. The same observer has completely whitewashed the male lesser spotted woodpecker. A pair has been nest-making in a tree in his paddock for the last three weeks or more ; and the cock-bird, so far from idling, has done rather more than his share of the work of excavation. The male birds of a good many species have a passion for nest-making. The wren is the standard example. He will build a " cock nest " within three days, and repeat the process several times. The brush turkey of Australia, most successfully transplanted to Whipsnade, is not only the sole nest-builder, for the hen confines herself to laying eggs in the early layers of the heap : he will go on scratching up leaves into the heap for months longer than the work is needed for hatching out the eggs!
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