SIDE LIGHTS ON BIRDS 



note that the corncrakes have returned to their 

 old haunts : the cuckoo is back in the plantation 

 on the hill, and the wood-wren and chiff-chaff 

 in the great beeches by the river. By the grassy 

 pathway the shrews are busy as of old, and the 

 grasshopper warblers are safely back home in the 

 tussocks of the willow-garth. 



As night draws on we observe with pleasure 

 that the owls are still at their old station, and yet, 

 it is only on reflection that we remember that we 

 have not caught even the faintest glimpse of 

 any one of these creatures. Indeed, if it were not 

 that they constantly proclaim their presence by 

 their various cries, it is conceivable that we 

 might have lived here for years and been utterly 

 unaware of their existence. 



Our knowledge of the presence of the grass- 

 hopper warbler, for instance, is almost always due 

 to sound, for it is a singularly reticent little 

 creature, and its insect-like note is usually the 

 only clue one has to its identity. " Nothing," 

 Gilbert White wrote long ago, " can be more 

 amusing than the whisper of this Httle bird, which 

 seems to be close by, though at a hundred yards 

 distance, and when close to your ear is scarce 

 any louder than when a great way off. Had I 

 not been a little acquainted with insects, and 

 known that the grasshopper kind is not yet 

 hatched, I should have hardly believed but that 

 it had been a Locusta whispering in the bushes. 

 The country people laugh when you tell them 

 that it is the note of a bird." This certainly also 

 applies to the wood- wren. It is noteworthy 

 how many people — woodmen and others — when 

 questioned, have no knowledge whatever of the 

 size and appearance of this bird, whose notes 

 they have heard in the trees above their heads, 

 summer by summer, from their earliest childhood. 



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