A SPRING HERESY 97 



and the like, exists a secondary system of minutely 

 localised points Swift Corner, Martins' Beat, Yellow- 

 hammer Hedge, Stoat Bank, Kestrels' Look-out, 

 Sandpiper Bend, Swarming-Tree, and others too 

 numerous to mention, constituting a scheme of 

 geography purely personal in its origin and application. 

 Birds and groups of birds are known to us individually 

 at certain points, and few strangers can invade our 

 territory without immediate detection. If any have 

 known the pleasures of roaming only, let them learn 

 the new, and equally intense pleasure of concentration. 

 A few square miles of ground, diversified by field and 

 farmstead, tree and hedgerow, orchard, garden, and 

 copse, with a length of stream, a pond or two, a 

 brook and ditch-ways, a patch of marsh and water 

 meadow, with no more than this, one has scope for 

 infinite labour and delight, and withal a sense of 

 intimate comprehension and control such as cannot 

 belong to observation conducted over a wide area 

 wherein one is little more than a stranger at any 

 point. Over such a limited space the seasons pass 

 with their changing life: spring migrants invade it 

 from the equator, staying to nest or passing on 

 farther north; autumn migrants pass over it in their 

 journey from Arctic breeding quarters, or remain in 

 it to winter. It is never long without change, it 

 is never desolate, for, as one group arrives, the 

 other departs, and as if to knit up the incoming and 

 outgoing populations, the residents quit it in some 

 cases neither in winter nor in summer, jealous in the 

 exclusive tenacity with which they guard the chosen 

 haunt. 



Another bird of the open, keeping rigidly to its 



