410 ENGLISH BIRD LIFE 



task peacefully and by degrees the little brown 

 singer becomes reassured. We see it soon, moving 

 furtively in the deeper shade ; now it descends to 

 explore the tangled roots of an oak-tree in a recess 

 hollowed by the stream ; now it follows the line of 

 an overhanging willow bough, threading its wav 

 through the leaves, till at length it reaches the great 

 wisp of drift-weed caught by the lowest branches. 

 Here it rests for a moment full in the open, and its 

 little throat swells as it utters its shrill rapid notes ; 

 then unobtrusively, but without haste, it steals back 

 to its shelter. But it never goes far aw^ay. All 

 through the long summer days, when w^e come, 

 wading deeply, to the stretch by the willows, we 

 hear its song and rarely miss the sight of the bird 

 itself, moving to and fro in the loved haunt which 

 it has travelled so far — it may be from South 

 Africa — to regain. 



With the exception of the Nightingale no bird 

 is so truly a night singer as the Sedge-bird. Often 

 in the summer midnight, when animated Nature is 

 sleeping in the hush of the mowing-grass, or in the 

 thickly-leaved woods, we hear, down by the river, 

 the sudden ring of the familiar notes. They are 

 repeated, time after time, for the Sedge-bird ap- 

 pears to sing more continuously at night than in 

 the daytime. Even w hen it becomes silent, a pebble 

 thrown lightly in the bushes will set it singing 

 again — a peculiaritv not, I think, to be noted in 

 anv other British bird. Indeed, as the belated 

 traveller takes his way home in the darkness, this 

 small warbler seems to delight in cheering him on 

 his path wnth a few merry staves. Oftentimes as 



