24 BRITISH BIRDS 



Their harsh notes, discordant when heard alone, are 

 not unpleasing in the full concert of spring. He 

 observes their weary, lazy manner of flying ; and in 

 one brief passage at once recalls Shakespeare and 

 anticipates Burns, both of whom, like himself, had 

 intimate acquaintance in boyhood with the phenomena 

 of country life : 



A blackening train 



Of clamorous rooks thick-urge their weary flight, 250 

 And seek the closing shelter of the grove. 



Still more effective, it must be admitted, are the 

 greater poet's briefer words 



Light thickens, and the crow 

 Makes wing to the rooky wood. 



Song-birds and domestic fowls are found in human 

 neighbourhoods. They are at leisure, and take their 

 pleasure, in trim gardens and on cultivated fields and 

 in farmyards. But there are birds that shun the path 

 of man, more or less, and would lead their lives far 240 

 apart from his ' danger '. Such are predacious birds 

 and wild-fowl. Of the latter class Thomson particu- 

 larizes at least a dozen different kinds. He mentions 

 the plover, the heron, the bittern, the stork, the quail, 

 the partridge, the magpie, the wild-duck, and the 

 heath-hen, besides the jay, the daw, and such varieties 

 of the wild pigeon as the rock-dove or culver and 

 the cushat or queest. He notices the early mating of 

 the plover, its wild cry, its wheeling flight, the under 

 whiteness of its wings, and its artifice in decoying 250 

 intruders away from its nest. It circles around the 

 head of the wandering swain, with intentional creak- 



