COUNTRY LIFE
A Blackbird Triangle All through the winter three blackbirds have played an odd game of courtship in and about my garden. I used to disturb them in the green lupin trees in December, under the wall, where -there was shelter ; and from the lupins the hen would rise silently up and land on the wall, tail up, like a fan, in invitation. She was a dull colour, like a rusty black jacket. Then as she sat there, in suspense, the first cock would squawk up from -the green branches in a silly rush of ardour for her, almost knocking her over the wall, and she would swoop off in a moment, with the cock after her. And then half a minute after they had gone, or even disappeared, the second cock would flutter from the lupin too, silently and rather heavily, without agitation. And there he would sit for a minute, looking across the wintry garden, a sort of bird Charlie Chaplin, a little comic in his droll meditation. Then he would be off : a slow but determined kind of flight, without squawks or ardent
swoops. • •
The hen and the first cock would have reached the hedge or the rock garden and the flutterings and pursuits of courtship would have begun by the time. the second cock arrived. And in a minute the hen would be off again, back to the tree-lupins or over into the field, with the first cock madly. aler her. For a minutes the second cock would rest and v. at.c..:11, always the Charlie Chaplin, just too late. Then he would be after them again ; and sometimes, after some more ardent bit of preoccupation on their part, he would catch up with them and play gooseberry for a minute, until they moved again. They were often on the steps of the rock- garden, and whenever the hen hopped up the steps the first cock followed her, and then after an interval the second cock. Then she came down, and the first cock came down ; then after a minute the gooseberry. And so for hours she would lead them a dance up and down the steps and over the carpets of phlox and saxifrage, until she tired of it and flew away, with the first cock in terrific pursuit and the second silently but infallibly behind. As the spring came on and there were more and more birds and flowers to see, I tired a little of watching them. But in April there was a blackbird's nest with three eggs in the hedge, and I saw the hen in tl e early morning perched on the wall above the lupin trees, tail fanned up, the same rusty colour, as she came off to feed. And I saw the cock feeding on the lawn ; but which one he was I could not for the life of me tell.
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