One of Nature's Stylists— I described recently the actions of
a. cuckoo striking his gong. Last evening I watched a yellowhamther while he repeated his familiar ditty about "a little bit of bread and no cheese.". He perched on a porcelain insulator on a telephone pole, and ignored me and my Corgi passing below, and the Siamese cat who is always the third party m these sundown strolls. As he began his song he began also to hunch his little body, drawing 'his head back and up, so that by the time he got to " bread " he was sitting on 'his tail and his head was lost in :his neck- feathers, except for an open beak gaping at the mid-sky. But with the second part of the phrase, "and no cheese," he stretched himself again and brought out the long-draft last word with a ceremonious bow, worth a three-cornered hat and a court-sword. I watched this performance several times, while the Corgi twitched his ear-tips (being unable to look so high). Had not the cat opened an almost dripping mouth and moaned with hunter's passi6n, I might have studied the singer's style indefinitely. But the jungle sound woke him from his art to grim
reality, and "off he flew. "
This physical stance of birds in song is a matter that few writers tackle. I do not remember that even W. H. Hudson has had much to say about it. His effort was more to convey the effect of the song itself.
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