i 9 4 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



voices of the wind. The feeling is partly due to early 

 associations, to boyhood, when I used to ride into 

 the vast marshes of the pampas in places where, 

 sitting on my horse, the tufted tops of the bulrushes 

 were on a level with my face. I sought for birds' 

 nests, above all for that of the strange little bittern. 

 It was a great prize, that small platform of yellow 

 sedge leaves, a foot or two above the water, with 

 three oval eggs no bigger than pigeon's eggs resting 

 on it, of a green so soft, brilliant, indescribably lovely, 

 that the sight of them would thrill me like some 

 shining supernatural thing or some heavenly melody. 



Or on a windy day when I would sit by the margin 

 to listen to the sound unlike any other made by the 

 wind in the green world. It was not continuous, 

 nor one, like the sea-like sound of the pines, but in 

 gusts from this part or that all round you, now 

 startlingly loud, then quickly falling to low mur- 

 murings, always with something human in it, but 

 wilder, sadder, more airy than a human voice, as 

 of ghost-like beings, invisible to me, haunting the 

 bulrushes, conversing together and calling to one 

 another in their unearthly tones. 



And the birds! Ah, to be back in the Somerset of 

 that far time — the paradise of birds in its reedy 

 inland sea, its lake of Athelney! 



I have often wished to be back in the old undrained 

 Lincolnshire for the sake of its multitudinous wild- 

 bird life in far more recent times, as described by 

 eye-witnesses — Michael Drayton, for example, no 

 longer ago than the time of Elizabeth. Does any 



