30 SPRING 



flocks and work their way to the north-east coast, from 

 which they take flight across the North Sea. They grow 

 very restless and noisy, especially in the afternoons towards 

 roosting-time. They will fill a wood with the same kind of 

 abusive tumult that jays and blackbirds raise round a stray 

 brown owl ; but there is no owl or wandering cat startling 

 the inhabitants of the wood ; it is merely the fieldfares' spring 

 fever. On their north-eastward way large numbers of field- 

 fares often follow the line of the Chiltern hills, which leads 

 them out at last to the Wash ; and sometimes in April huge 

 flocks can be met with in the thick beech-woods that cover those 

 hills, flying in loose skeins from hill-top to hill-top, or chatter- 

 ing in dark flocks in the boughs. The snow is thawing in the 

 Norwegian spruce forest, and the impulse is on them to depart. 

 The fieldfare has a sweet song in his own home ; but it is 

 heard extremely rarely before his departure from England. 

 As we usually see and hear him on the eve of his home- 

 going, he seems but a rough and noisy harbinger of summer, 

 even for the snow-torn Baltic forests. On the same spring 

 walk, when we see the fieldfares' departing flocks, we are 

 very likely to hear the notes of the first willow-wrens. All 

 the contrast of winter and summer seems expressed in the 

 willow-wren's soft cadence heard amidst the fieldfares' jar 

 and chatter. The little bird's voice seems like a zephyr 

 driving them home. Willow-wrens, or warblers, come very 

 early in April, not long after their close relations the chiff- 

 chaffs ; they seem inherent in the green moisture of the open- 

 ing larch-woods, which in the south of England should break 

 forth in the second week of the month. Where the exquisite 

 aroma of the young larch-sprays breathes on the April air, 

 we shall generally hear the soft dropping chime of the bird 

 which the American naturalist Burroughs thought the best 

 of all our English singers. He thought most English song- 



