ATTRACTIVE QUALITIES.--However agreeable this bird may be in the room, from its good humour, agility, gaiety, and song, it does not deserve the name of winter nightingale, which it bears in some places; its song is too simple and short; it is a little couplet, composed of a strain of the lark and one of the wren. The sounds _tchondi, hondi, hondi_ are repeated frequently and for a long time, always descending a sixth, and gradually diminishing in power. This song is accompanied with an uninterrupted movement of the wings and tail, and lasts through the year, except at the moulting season. Some young ones, reared in confinement, will, if placed beside a fine singing bird, learn enough of its song to embellish their own. But, whatever may be asserted on the subject, they never succeed in imitating the nightingale. When the dunnock disputes with its fellow captives for a place or for food its anger evaporates in a song, like the crested lark and the wagtail.
Motacilla rubecula, LINNÆUS; Le Rouge-gorge, BUFFON; Das Rothkelchen, BECHSTEIN.
The red-breast is almost universally known in Europe. It is five inches and three quarters long, two and a quarter of which belong to the tail. The beak is five lines in length, and horn brown, with the lower base and the inside yellow; the iris is deep brown; the shanks, eleven lines in height, are of the same colour; the forehead, cheeks, and under part of the body, from the beak to the bottom of the breast, are orange red; the upper part of the body and the wing-coverts dingy olive; the first wing-coverts have at their tip a little triangular spot.
The female, which is rather smaller, is not so orange-coloured on the forehead, and this colour is not so bright upon the breast; the shanks are a purplish brown; yellow spots are almost always absent from the wing-coverts; the old females alone having very small yellow marks.
The males of the first year, which are caught in the spring, very much resemble the females: they have but very small yellow spots, and sometimes none; the breast is saffron yellow; but the feet are the distinguishing mark, being always very dark brown.
This species has varieties, as the white red-breast and the variegated red-breast. In confinement, by sometimes removing successively the quill-feathers and tail-feathers out of the moulting season, they will at last be replaced by white ones. These birds are very pretty; I have had several in this way, but I have observed that these last feathers are so weak and delicate that they are easily injured and broken. This repeated operation must give pain to the little creatures, on which account it should be avoided.