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BY this time all the birds were breeding, some already breeding a second time. And now I began to suspect that they were not quite so undisturbed as the old dame had led me to believe; that they had not found a paradise in the village after all. One morning, as I moved softly along the hedge in my nightingale's lane, all at once I heard, in the old grassy orchard, to which it formed a boundary, swishing sounds of scuttling feet and half-suppressed exclamations of alarm; then a crushing through the hedge, and out, almost at my feet, rushed and leaped and tumbled half-a-dozen urchins, who had suddenly been frightened from a bird-nesting raid. Clothes torn, hands and faces scratched with thorns, hat-less, their tow-coloured hair all disordered or standing up like a white crest above their brown faces, rounded eyes staring--what an extraordinarily wild appearance they had! I was back

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in very old times, in the Britain of a thousand years before the coming of the Romans, and these were her young barbarians, learning their life's business in little things.

No, the birds of the village were not undisturbed while breeding; but happily the young savages never found my nightingale's nest. One day the bird came to the gate as usual, and was more alert and pugnacious than ever; and no wonder, for his mate came too, and with them four young birds. For a week they were about the cottage every day, when they dispersed, and one beautiful bright morning the male bird, in his old place near my window, attempted to sing, beginning with that rich, melodious throbbing, which is usually called "jugging," and following with half-a-dozen beautiful notes. That was all. It was July, and I heard no more music from him or from any other of his kind.

* * *

I have perhaps written at too great length of this bird. The nightingale was after all only one of the fifty-nine species I succeeded in identify-

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ing during my sojourn at the village. There were more. I heard the calls and cries of others in the wood and various places, but refused, except in the case of the too elusive crake, to set down any in my list that I did not see. It was not my ambition to make a long list. My greatest desire was to see well those that interested me most. But those who go forth, as I did, to look for birds that are a sight for sore eyes, must meet with many a disappointment. In all those fruit and shade trees that covered the village with a cloud of verdure, and in the neighbouring woods, not once did I catch a glimpse of the green woodpecker, a beautiful conspicuous bird, supposed to be increasing in many places in England. Its absence from so promising a locality seemed strange. Another species, also said to be increasing in the country--the turtledove, was extremely abundant. In the tall beech woods its low, monotonous crooning note was heard all day long from all sides. In shady places, where the loud, shrill bird-voices are few, one prefers this sound to the set song of the woodpigeon, being more continuous and soothing, and of the nature of a lullaby. It sometimes reminded me of the low monotone I

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have heard from a Patagonian mother when singing her "swart papoose" to sleep. Still, I would gladly have spared many of these woodland crooners for the sake of one magpie--that bird of fine feathers and a bright mind, which I had not looked on for a whole year, and now hoped to see again. But he was not there; and after I had looked for myself, some of the natives assured me that no magpie had been seen for years in that wood.

For a time I feared that I was to be just as unlucky with regard to the jay, seeing that the owner of the extensive beech woods adjoining the village permitted his keeper to kill the most interesting birds in it--kestrels and sparrowhawks, owls, jays, and magpies. He was a new man, comparatively, in the place, and wanted to increase his preserves, but to do this it was necessary first to exclude the villagers--the Badgers, who were no doubt partial to pheasants' eggs. Now, to close an ancient right-of-way is a ticklish business, and this was an important one, seeing that the village women did their Saturday marketing in the town beyond the wood and river, and with the path closed they would have two miles

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further to walk. The new lord wisely took this into consideration, and set himself to win the goodwill of the people before attempting any strong measures. He walked in the lanes and was affable to the cottage women and nice to the children, and by and bye he exclaimed, "What! No institute! no hall, or any place where you can meet and spend the long winter evenings? Well, I'll soon see to that." And soon, to their delight, they had a nice building reared on a piece of land which he bought for the purpose, furnished with tables, chairs, bagatelle boards, and all accessories; and he also supplied them with newspapers and magazines. He was immensely popular, but appeared to think little of what he had done. When they expressed their gratitude to him he would move his hand, and answer, "Oh, I'm going to do a great deal more than that for you!"

A few months went by, then he caused a notice to be put up about the neighbourhood that the path through the wood was going to be closed "by order." No one took any notice, and a few weeks later his workmen appeared on the scene and erected a huge oakwood barrier across the

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path; also a notice on a board that the wood was strictly private and trespassers would be prosecuted. The villagers met in force at the institute and the inn that evening, and after discussing the matter over their ale, they armed themselves with axes and went in a body and demolished the barrier.

The owner was disgusted, but took no action. "This," he said, "is their gratitude"; and from that day he ceased to subscribe to the local charities or take his walks in the village. He had given the institute, and so could not pull it down nor prevent them from using it.

It was refreshing to hear that the Badgers had shown a proper spirit in the matter, and I was grateful to them for having kept the right-of-way, as on most days I spent several hours in the beautiful woods.

To return to the jay. In spite of the keeper's persecution, I knew that he was there; every morning when I got up to look out of the window between four and five o'clock, I heard from some quarter of the village that curious subdued, but far-reaching, scolding note he is accustomed to utter when his suspicions have been aroused.

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That was the jay's custom--to come from the woods before even the earliest risers were up, and forage in the village. By and bye I discovered that, by lying motionless for an hour or so on the dry moss in the wood, he would at length grow so bold as to allow himself to be seen, but high up among the topmost branches. Then, by means of my binocular, I had the wild thing on my thumb, so to speak, exhibiting himself to me, inquisitive, perplexed, suspicious, enraged by turns, as he flirted wings and tail, lifted and lowered his crest, glancing down with bright, wild eyes. What a beautiful hypocrisy and delightful power this is which enables us, sitting or lying motionless, feigning sleep perhaps, thus to fool this wild, elusive creature, and bring all its cunning to naught! He is so much smaller and keener-sighted, able to fly, to perch far up above me, to shift his position every minute or two, masking his small figure with this or that tuft of leaves, while still keeping his eyes on me--in spite of it all to have him so close, and without moving or taking any trouble, to see him so much better than he can see me! But this is a legitimate trickery of science, so innocent that we

JAY.

. inquisitive, perplexed, suspicious, enraged by turns."

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can laugh at our dupe when we practise it; nor do we afterwards despise our superior cunning and feel ashamed, as when we slaughter wild birds with far-reaching shot, which they cannot escape.

* * *

All these corvine birds, which the gamekeeper pursues so relentlessly, albeit they were before him, killing when they killed to better purpose; and, let us hope, will exist after him--all these must greatly surpass other kinds in sagacity to have escaped extermination. In the present condition of things, the jay is perhaps the best off, on account of his smaller size and less conspicuous colouring; but whether more cunning than the crow or magpie or not, in perpetual alertness and restless energy or intensity of life, he is without an equal among British birds. And this quality forms his chief attraction; it is more to the mind than his lifted crest and bright eyes, his fine vinaceous brown and the patch of sky-blue on his wings. One would miss him greatly from the woods; some of the melody may well

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be spared for the sake of the sudden, brain-piercing, rasping, rending scream with which he startles us in our solitary forest walks.

It is this extreme liveliness of the jay which makes it more distressing to the mind to see it pent in a cage than other birds of its family, such as the magpie; just as it is more distressing to see a skylark than a finch in prison, because the lark has an irresistible impulse to rise when his singing fit is on. Sing he must, in or out of prison, yet there can be little joy in the performance when the bird is incessantly teased with the unsatisfied desire to mount and pour out his music at heaven's gate.

Out of the cages, jays make charming and beautiful pets, and some who have kept them have assured me that they are not mischievous birds. The late Mark Melford one time when I visited him, had two jays, handsome birds, in bright, glossy plumage, always free to roam where they liked, indoors or out. We were sitting talking in his garden when one of the jays came flying to us and perched on a wooden ledge a few feet from and above our heads, and after sitting quietly for a little while he suddenly made a dash

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at my head, just brushing it with his wings, then returned to his perch. At intervals of a few moments he repeated this action, and when I remarked that he probably resented the presence of a stranger, Melford exclaimed, "Oh, no, he wants to play with you--that's all."

His manner of playing was rather startling. So long as I kept my eyes on him he remained motionless, but the instant my attention wandered, or when in speaking I looked at my companion, the sudden violent dash at my head would be made.

I was assured by Melford that his birds never carried off and concealed bright objects, a habit which it has been said the jay, as well as the magpie, possesses.

"What would he do with this shilling if I tossed it to him?" I asked.

"Catch it," he returned. "It would simply be play to him, but he wouldn't carry it off."

I tossed up the shilling, and the bird had perhaps expected me to do so, as he deftly caught it just as a dog catches a biscuit when you toss one to him. After keeping it a few moments in his beak, he put it down at his side. I took out four

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more shilling pieces and tossed them quickly one by one, and he caught them without a miss and placed them one by one with the other, not scattered about, but in a neat pile. Then, seeing that I had no more shillings he flew off.

After these few playful passages with one of his birds, I could understand Melford's feeling about his free pet jays, magpies and jackdaws; they were not merely birds to him, but rather like so many delightful little children in the beautiful shape of birds.

* * *

There was no rookery in or near the village, but a large flock of rooks were always to be seen feeding and sunning themselves in some level meadows near the river. It struck me one day as a very fine sight, when an old bird, who looked larger and blacker and greyer-faced than the others, and might have been the father and leader of them all, got up on a low post, and with wide-open beak poured forth a long series of most impressive caws. One always wonders at the meaning of such displays. Is the old bird ad-

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dressing the others in the rook language on some matter of great moment; or is he only expressing some feeling in the only language he has--those long, hoarse, uninflected sounds; and if so, what feeling? Probably a very common one. The rooks appeared happy and prosperous, feeding in the meadow grass in that June weather, with the hot sun shining on their glossy coats. Their days of want were long past and forgotten; the anxious breeding period was over; the tempest in the tall trees; the annual slaughter of the young birds--all past and forgotten. The old rook was simply expressing the old truth, that life was worth living.

These rooks were usually accompanied by two or three or more crows--a bird of so ill-repute that the most out-and-out enthusiast for protection must find it hard to say a word in its favour. At any rate, the rooks must think, if they think at all, that this frequent visitor and attendant of theirs is more kin than kind. I have related in a former work that I once saw a peregrine strike down and kill an owl--a sight that made me gasp with astonishment. But I am inclined to think of this act as only a slip, a slight aberration,

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on the part of the falcon, so universal is the sense of relationship among the kinds that have the rapacious habit; or, at the worst, it was merely an isolated act of deviltry and daring of the sharp-winged pirate of the sky, a sudden assertion of over-mastering energy and power, and a very slight offence compared with that of the crow when he carries off and devours his callow little cousins of the rookery.

* * *

One of the first birds I went out to seek--perhaps the most medicinal of all birds to see--was the kingfisher; but he was not anywhere on the river margin, although suitable places were plentiful enough, and myriads of small fishes were visible in the shallow water, seen at rest like dim-pointed stripes beneath the surface, and darting away and scattering outwards, like a flight of arrows, at any person's approach. Walking along the river bank one day, when the place was still new to me, I discovered a stream, and following it up arrived at a spot where a clump of trees overhung the water, casting on it a deep shade. On the other side of the stream butter-

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cups grew so thickly that the glazed petals of the flowers were touching; the meadow was one broad expanse of brilliant yellow. I had not been standing half a minute in the shade before the bird I had been seeking darted out from the margin, almost beneath my feet, and then, instead of flying up or down stream, sped like an arrow across the field of buttercups. It was a very bright day, and the bird going from me with the sunshine full on it, appeared entirely of a shining, splendid green. Never had I seen the kingfisher in such favourable circumstances; flying so low above the flowery level that the swiftly vibrating wings must have touched the yellow petals; he was like a waif from some far tropical land. The bird was tropical, but I doubt if there exists within the tropics anything to compare with a field of buttercups--such large and unbroken surfaces of the most brilliant colour in nature. The first bird's mate appeared a minute later, flying in the same direction, and producing the same splendid effect, and also green. These two alone were seen, and only on this occasion, although I often revisited the spot, hoping to find them again.

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Now, the kingfisher is blue, and I am puzzled to know why, on this one occasion, it appeared green. I have, in a former work, Argentine Ornithology, described a contrary effect in a small and beautiful tyrant-bird, Cyanotis azarae, variously called, in the vernacular, "All-colored or Many-colored Kinglet." It has a little blue on its head, but its entire back, from the nape to the tail, is deep green. It lives in beds of bulrushes, and when seen flying from the spectator in a very strong light, at a distance of twenty or thirty yards, its colour in appearance is bright cerulean blue. It is a sunlight effect, but how produced is a mystery to me. In the case of the two green kingfishers, I am inclined to think that the yellow of that shining field of buttercups in some way produced the illusion.

Why are these exquisite birds so rare, even in situations so favourable to them as the one I have described? Are they killed by severe frosts? An ornithological friend from Oxfordshire assures me that it will take several favourable seasons to make good the losses of the late terrible winter of 1891-92. But this, as every ornithologist knows, is only a part of the truth. The large

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number of stuffed kingfishers under glass shades that one sees in houses of all descriptions, in town and country, but most frequently in the parlours of country cottages and inns, tell a melancholy story. Some time ago a young man showed me three stuffed kingfishers in a case, and informed me that he had shot them at a place (which he named) quite close to London. He said that these three birds were the last of their kind ever seen there; that he had gone, week after week and watched and waited, until one by one, at long intervals, he had secured them all; and that two years had passed since the last one was killed, and no other kingfisher had been seen at the place. He added that the waterside which these birds had frequented was resorted to by crowds of London working people on Saturday afternoons, Sundays and other holidays; the fact that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pairs of tired eyes would have been freshened and gladdened by the sight of their rare gem-like beauty only made him prouder of his achievement. This young man was a cockney of the small shop-keeping class--a Philistine of the Philistines--hence there was no call to feel surprise at his self-glori-

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fication over such a matter. But what shall we say of that writer whose masterly works on English rural life are familiar to everyone, who is regarded as first among "lovers of nature," when he relates that he invariably carried a gun when out of doors, mainly with the object of shooting any kingfisher he might chance to see, as the dead bird always formed an acceptable present to the cottager's wife, who would get it stuffed and keep it as an ornament on her parlour mantelshelf!

Happily for the kingfisher, and for human beings who love nature, the old idea that beautiful birds were meant to be destroyed for fun by anyone and everyone, from the small-brained, detestable cockney sportsman I have mentioned, to the gentlemen who write books about the beauties of nature, is now gradually giving place to this new one--that it would be better to preserve the beautiful things we possess. Half a century before the author of "Wild Life in a Southern Country" amused himself by carrying a gun to shoot kingfishers, the inhabitants of that same county of Wiltshire were bathed in tears--so I read in an old Salisbury newspaper--at the tragic death of a young gentleman of great distinction,

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great social charm, great promise. He was out shooting swallows with a friend who, firing at a passing swallow, had the misfortune to shoot and kill him.

At the present time when gentlemen practise a little at flying birds, to get their hand in before the first of September, they shoot sparrows as a rule, or if they shoot swallows, which afford them better practice, they do not say anything about it.

IV

WHERE the stream broadened and mixed with the river, there existed a dense and extensive rush-bed--an island of rushes separated by a deep channel, some twelve or fourteen yards in width from the bank. This was a favourite nesting-place of the sedge-warblers; occasionally as many as a dozen birds could be heard singing at the same time, although in no sense together, and the effect was indeed curious. This is not a song that spurts and gushes up fountain-like in the manner of the robin's, and of some other kinds, sprinkling the listener, so to speak, with a sparkling vocal spray; but it keeps low down, a song that flows along the surface gurgling and prattling like musical running water, in its shallow pebbly channel. Listening again, the similitude that seemed appropriate at first was cast aside for another, and then another still. The hidden

36

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singers scattered all about their rushy island were small, fantastic, human minstrels, performing on a variety of instruments, some unknown, others recognizable--bones and castanets, tiny hurdy-gurdies, piccolos, banjos, tabours, and Pandean pipes--a strange medley!

Interesting as this concert was, it held me less than the solitary singing of a sedge-warbler that lived by himself, or with only his mate, higher up where the stream was narrow, so that I could get near him; for he not only tickled my ears with his rapid, reedy music, but amused my mind as well with a pretty little problem in bird psychology. I could sit within a few yards of his tangled haunt without hearing a note; but if I jumped up and made a noise, or struck the branches with my stick, he would incontinently burst into song. It is a very well-known habit of the bird, and on account of it and of the very peculiar character of the sounds emitted, his song is frequently described by ornithologists as "mocking, defiant, scolding, angry," etc. It seems clear that at different times the bird sings from different exciting causes. When, undisturbed by a strange presence, he bursts spontaneously into singing, the

N

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music, as in other species, is simply an expression of overflowing gladness; at other times, the bird expressed such feelings as alarm, suspicion, solicitude, perhaps anger, by singing the same song. How does this come about?

I have stated, when speaking of the nightingale, that birds in which the singing faculty is highly developed, sometimes make the mistake of bursting into song when anxious or distressed or in pain, but that this is not the case with the mocking-birds. Some species of these brilliant songsters of the New World, in their passion for variety (to put it that way), import every harsh and grating cry and sound they know into their song; but, on the other hand, when anxious for the safety of their young, or otherwise distressed, they emit only the harsh and grating sounds--never a musical note. In the sedge-warbler, the harsh, scolding sounds that express alarm, solicitude, and other painful emotions, have also been made a part of the musical performance; but this differs from the songs of most species, the mocking birds included, in the extraordinary rapidity with which it is enunciated; once the song begins it goes on swiftly to the finish, harsh and

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melodious notes seeming to overlap and mingle, the sound forming, to speak in metaphor, a close intricate pattern of strongly-contrasted colours. Now the song invariably begins with the harsh notes--the sounds which, at other times, express alarm and other more or less painful emotions--and it strikes me as a probable explanation that when the bird in the singing season has been startled into uttering these harsh and grating sounds, as when a stone is flung into the rushes, he is incapable of uttering them only, but the singing notes they suggest and which he is in the habit of uttering, follow automatically.

The spot where I observed this wee feathered fantasy, the tantalizing sprite of the rushes, and where I soon ceased to see, hear, or think about him, calls for a fuller description. On one side the wooded hill sloped downward to the stream; on the other side spread the meadows where the rooks came every day to feed, or to sit and stand about motionless, looking like birds cut out of jet, scattered over about half an acre of the grassy, level ground. Stout old pollard willows grew here and there along the banks and were pleasant to see, this being the one man-mutilated thing in

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nature which, to my mind, not infrequently gains in beauty by the mutilation, so admirably does it fit into and harmonize with the landscape. At one point there was a deep, nearly stagnant pool, separated from the stream by a strip of wet, rushy ground, its still dark surface covered with water-lilies, not yet in bloom. They were just beginning to show their polished buds, shaped like snake's heads, above the broad, oily leaves floating like islands on the surface. The stream itself was, on my side, fringed with bulrushes and other aquatic plants; on the opposite bank there were some large alders lifting their branches above great masses of bramble and rose-briar, all together forming as rich and beautiful a tangle as one could find even in the most luxuriant of the wild, unkept hedges round the village. The briars especially flourished wonderfully at this spot, climbing high and dropping their long, slim branches quite down to the surface of the water, and in some places forming an arch above the stream. A short distance from this tangle, so abundantly sprinkled with its pale delicate roses, the water was spanned by a small wooden bridge, which no person appeared to use, but which had

WREN.

"... mysterious talk in the leaves,"

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a use. It formed the one dry clear spot in the midst of all that moist vegetation, and the birds that came from the wood to drink and search for worms and small caterpillars first alighted on the bridge. There they would rest a few moments, take a look round, then fly to some favourite spot where succulent morsels had been picked up on previous visits. Thrushes, blackbirds, sparrows, reed-buntings, chaffinches, tits, wrens, with many other species, succeeded each other all day long; for now they mostly had young to provide for, and it was their busiest time.

The unsullied beauty and solitariness of this spot made me wish at first that I was a boy once more, to climb and to swim, to revel in the sunshine and flowers, to be nearer in spirit to the birds and dragon flies and water-rats; then, that I could build a cabin and live there all the summer long, forgetful of the world and its affairs, with no human creature to keep me company, and no book to read, or with only one slim volume, some Spanish poet, let me say Melendez, for preference--only a small selection from his too voluminous writings; for he, albeit an eighteenth-century singer, was perhaps

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the last of that long, illustrious line of poets who sang as no others have sung of the pure delight-fulness of a life with nature. Something of this charm is undoubtedly due to the beauty of the language they wrote in and to the free, airy grace of assonants. What a hard, artificial sound the rhyme too often has: the clink that falls at regular intervals as of a stone-breaker's hammer! In the freer kinds of Spanish poetry there are numberless verses that make the smoothest lines and lyrics of our sweetest and most facile singers, from Herrick to Swinburne, seem hard and mechanical by comparison. But there is something more. I doubt, for one thing, if we are justified in the boast we sometimes make that the feeling for Nature is stronger in our poets than in those of other countries. The most scientific critic may be unable to pick a hole in Tennyson's botany and zoology; but the passion for, and feeling of oneness with Nature may exist without this modern minute accuracy. Be this as it may, it was not Tennyson, nor any other of our poets, that I would have taken to my dreamed-of solitary cabin for companionship: Melendez came first to my mind. I think of his lines to a butterfly:

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De donde alegre vienes Tan suelta y tan festiva, Las valles alegrando Veloz mariposilla?*

and can imagine him--the poet himself--coming to see me through the woods and down the hill with the careless ease and lightness of heart of his own purple-winged child of earth and air--tan suelta y tan festiva. Here in these four or five words one may read the whole secret of his charm--the exquisite delicacy and seeming artlessness in the form, and the spirit that is in him--the old, simple, healthy, natural gladness in nature, and feeling of kinship with all the children of life. But I do not wish to disturb anyone in his prepossessions. It would greatly trouble me to think that my reader should, for the space of a page, or even of a single line, find himself in opposition to and not with me; and I am free

* May be roughly rendered thus:

Whence, blithe one, comest thou With that airy, happy flight--To make the valleys glad, O swift-winged butterfly?

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to admit that with regard to poetry one's preferences change according to the mood one happens to be in and to the conditions generally. At home in murky London on most days I should probably seek pleasure and forgetfulness in Browning; but in such surroundings as I have been describing the lighter-hearted, elf-like Melendez accords best with my spirit, one whose finest songs are without human interest; who is irresponsible as the wind, and as unstained with earthly care as the limpid running water he delights in: who is brother to bird and bee and butterfly, and worships only liberty and sunshine, and is in love with nothing but a flower.

Nearly midway between the useful little bridge and the rose-blossoming tangle I have spoken of there were three elm-trees growing in the open grassy space near the brook; they were not lofty, but had very wide-spreading horizontal branches, which made them look like oaks. This was an ideal spot in which to spend the sultry hours, and I had no sooner cast myself on the short grass in the shade than I noticed that the end of a projecting branch above my head, and about twenty feet from the ground, was a favourite perch of

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a tree-pipit. He sang in the air and, circling gracefully down, would alight on the branch, where, sitting near me and plainly visible, he would finish his song and renew it at intervals; then, leaving the loved perch, he would drop, singing, to the ground, just a few yards beyond the tree's shadow; thence, singing again, he would mount up and up above the tree, only to slide down once more with set, unfluttering wings, with a beautiful swaying motion to the same old resting-place on the branch, there to sing and sing and sing.

If Melendez himself had come to me with flushed face and laughing eyes, and sat down on the grass at my side to recite one of his most enchanting poems, I should, with finger on lip, have enjoined silence; for in the mood I was then in at that sequestered spot, with the landscape outside my shady green pavilion bathed and quivering in the brilliant sunshine, this small bird had suddenly become to me more than any other singer, feathered or human. And yet the tree-pipit is not very highly regarded among British melodists, on account of the little variety there is in its song. Nevertheless, it is most sweet--perhaps the

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sweetest of all. It is true that there are thousands, nay, millions of things--sights and sounds and perfumes--which are or may be described as sweet, so common is the metaphor, and this too common use has perhaps somewhat degraded it; but in this case there is no other word so well suited to describe the sensation produced.

The tree-pipit has a comparatively short song, repeated, with some variation in the number and length of the notes, at brief intervals. The opening notes are thick and throaty, and similar in character to the throat-notes of many other species in this group, a softer sound than the throat-notes of the skylark and woodlark, which they somewhat resemble. The canary-like trills and thin piping notes, long drawn out, which follow vary greatly in different individuals, and in many cases the trills are omitted. But the concluding notes of the song I am considering--which is only one note repeated again and again--are clear and beautifully inflected, and have that quality of sweetness, of lusciousness, I have mentioned. The note is uttered with a downward fall, more slowly and expressively at each repetition, as if the singer felt overcome at the sweet-

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ness of life and of his own expression, and languished somewhat at the close; its effect is like that of the perfume of the honeysuckle, infecting the mind with a soft, delicious languor, a wish to lie perfectly still and drink of the same sweetness again and again in larger measure.

To some who are familiar with this by no means uncommon little bird, it may seem that I am overstating the charm of its melody. I can only say that the mood I was then in made me very keenly appreciative; also that I have never heard any other individual of this species able to produce precisely the same effect. We know that there are quite remarkable differences in the songs of birds of the same species, that among several that appear to be perfect and to sing alike one will possess a charm above the other. The truth is they are not alike; they affect us differently, but the sense is not fine enough or not sufficiently trained to detect the cause. The poet's words may be used of this natural melody as well as of the works of art:

"O the little more and how much it is!"

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TEere were about the village, within a few minutes' walk of the cottage, not fewer than half-a-dozen tree-pipits, each inhabiting a favourite spot where I could always count on finding and hearing him at almost any hour of the day from sunrise to sunset. Yet I cared not for these. To the one chosen bird I returned daily to spend the hot hours, lying in the shade and listening to his strain. Finally, I allowed two or three days to slip by, and when I revisited the old spot the secret charm had vanished. The bird was there, and rose and fell as formerly, pouring out his melody; but it was not the same: something was missing from those last sweet, languishing notes. Perhaps in the interval there had been some disturbing accident in his little wild life, though I could hardly believe it, since his mate was still sitting about thirty yards from the tree on the five little mottled eggs in her nest. Or perhaps his midsummer's music had reached its highest point, and was now in its declension. And perhaps the fault was in me. The virtue that draws and holds us does not hold us always, nor very long; it departs from all things, and we wonder why. The loss is in ourselves, although

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we do not know it. Nature, the chosen mistress of our heart, does not change towards us, yet she is now, even to-day--

"Less full of purple colour and hid spice,"

and smiles and sparkles in vain to allure us, and when she touches us with her warm, caressing touch, there is, compared with yesterday, only a faint response.

V

COMING back from the waterside through the wood, after the hottest hours of the day were over, the crooning of the turtle-doves would be heard again on every side--that summer beech-wood lullaby that seemed never to end. The other bird voices were of the willow-wren, the wood-wren, the coal-tit, and the now somewhat tiresome chiffchaff; from the distance would come the prolonged rich strain of the blackbird, and occasionally the lyric of the chaffinch. The song of this bird gains greatly when heard from a tall tree in the woodland silence; it has then a resonance and wildness which it appears to lack in the garden and orchard. In the village I had been glad to find that the chaffinch was not too common, that in the tangle of minstrelsy one could enjoy there his vigorous voice was not predominant.

so

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Of all these woodland songsters the wood-wren impressed me the most. He could always be heard, no matter where I entered the wood, since all this world of tall beeches was a favoured haunt of the wood-wren, each pair keeping to its own territory of half-an-acre of trees or so, and somewhere among those trees the male was always singing, far up, invisible to eyes beneath, in the topmost sunlit foliage of the tall trees. On entering the wood I would, stand still for a few minutes to listen to the various sounds until that one fascinating sound would come to my ears from some distance away, and to that spot I would go to find a bed of last year's leaves to sit upon and listen. It was an enchanting experience to be there in that woodland twilight with the green cloud of leaves so far above me; to listen to the silence, to the faint whisper of the wind-touched leaves, then to little prelusive drops of musical sound, growing louder and falling faster until they ran into one prolonged trill. And there I would sit listening for half-an-hour or a whole hour; but the end would not come; the bird is indefatigable and with his mysterious talk in the leaves would tire the sun himself and send

52 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE

him down the sky: for not until the sun has set and the wood has grown dark does the singing cease.