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Mr. Hubert D. Astley,



more sparse and a gleam of light appears towards the sunset, then

the cranes shout and loudly call from meadow to meadow. This is

in the winter on mild days. When it is cold they are mostly silent,

but as the days lengthen out in February, then their trumpeting

voices are heard, with a more joyful and triumphant timbre. The

Manchurians’ notes are very loud and powerful, but those of the

white-necked cranes are more musical; fuller and rounder. At least,

so it seems to me.


I think these crane-calls are very inspiring. I delight in

standing still by the moat with the light of the setting sun shining

behind the dark boughs of the big cedar" and reflecting glories of

red and gold in the water, and I take great pleasure in hearing at

such moments the powerful sonorous cries of the cranes ; ringing out,

first from one point and then from another, seeming to fill the sky

with sound.


* ■»


I was greatly troubled in October and November last by a

hawk which regularly came after and preyed upon my Palm doves.

One evening I was in one of the orchards, one which is close to the

aviaries, when the culprit, hearing me whistle in order to feed the

doves, deliberately came along and settled in an apple tree within

fifty yards of me. I shouted ; clapping my hands ; but there she

sat saying “Go along with you,” “Where’s your gun?” and not

until I was almost at the foot of the tree, did that wicked marauder

depart.


She departed altogether two days afterwards, for on the fol¬

lowing day, she was seen to stoop at a dove, luckily missing it; and

I was told that she came every day regularly, and that doves’

feathers had been found in several places where the birds had been

struck down.


So the gamekeeper lay in wait. “ I’d have shot her before

Sir,” was his excuse, “ but you told me not to kill kestrels.”


* Alas ! since writing this, the magnificent tree (planted by the poet Wordsworth

in 1827) was entirely uprooted by the hurricane on December 27th, and

never again will the blackbirds flute on the topmost branches by day, or

the owls hoot in its spreading boughs by night. The spirit of the ancient

house seemed to dwell in it.



