BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 39 



melodious notes seeming to overlap and mingle, 

 the sound forming, to speak in metaphor, a close 

 intricate pattern of strongly-contrasted colours. 

 Now the song invariably begins with the harsh 

 notes — the sounds which, at other times, express 

 alarm and other more or less painful emotions — 

 and it strikes me as a probable explanation that 

 when the bird in the singing season has been 

 startled into uttering these harsh and grating 

 sounds, as when a stone is flung into the rushes, 

 he is incapable of uttering them only, but the 

 singing notes they suggest and which he is in the 

 habit of uttering, follow automatically. 



The spot where I observed this wee feathered 

 fantasy, the tantalizing sprite of the rushes, and 

 where I soon ceased to see, hear, or think about 

 him, calls for a fuller description. On one side 

 the wooded hill sloped downward to the stream; 

 on the other side spread the meadows where the 

 rooks came every day to feed, or to sit and stand 

 about motionless, looking like birds cut out of 

 jet, scattered over about half an acre of the grassy, 

 level ground. Stout old pollard willows grew 

 here and there along the banks and were pleasant 

 to see, this being the one man-mutilated thing in 



