74 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



them, sometimes quite straight, more often bent 

 near the breast like a crooked piece of copper wire. 

 A strange appearance! — everything stiff and abrupt, 

 odd-looking, uncouth, no graceful curves or sweeps. 

 The long legs, carried horizontally, balance the 

 neck behind — but grotesquely, as one gargoyle glares 

 at another. Thus herons fly within the heronry, 

 but as they sail out, en voyage^ the head is drawn 

 back between the shoulders, in the more familiar 

 way. As morning dawns, the shadowy "air-drawn" 

 forms begin to appear more substantially. Several 

 of the birds may then be seen perched about in 

 the trees, some gaunt and upright, others hunched 

 up in a heap, with, perhaps, one statuesque figure 

 placed, like a sentinel, on the top of a tall, slender 

 larch, the thin pinnacle of the trunk of which is 

 bent over to form a perch. 



Other, and much sweeter, sounds begin now to 

 mingle with the harsh, though not unpleasing 

 screams, and, increasing every moment in volume, 

 make them, at last, but part of a universal and most 

 divine harmony. The whole plantation has become 

 a song. Song-thrush and mistle-thrush make it up, 

 mostly, between them, but all help, and all is a 

 music ; chatters and twitters seem glorified, nothing 

 sounds harshly, joy makes it melody. There is a 

 time — the daylight of dawn, but not daylight — 

 when the birds sing everywhere, as though to salute 

 it. As the real daylight comes, this sinks and 

 almost ceases, and never in the whole twenty-four 

 hours, is there such an hour again. The laugh, 

 and answering laugh, of the green woodpecker is 

 frequent, now, and mingles sweetly with the loud 

 cooing of the wood-pigeons — not the characteristic 



