10 BRITISH BIRDS 



Some of them revel in it as it falls, fluttering in the 

 troubled air or skimming round the dimply pool in 

 evident enjoyment. As soon as the rain is over, and 

 the splendours of sun and rainbow light up the 

 freshened landscape till it laughs again, they will 

 break their silence, and join their richest notes in 100 

 unison with the wild concert of brooks and winds, 

 bleatings on the hillside, and 



Hollow lows responsive from the vale. 



A deeper silence seizes them in the long drought of 

 a hot summer. The heat afflicts them ; they droop, 

 deep in the thicket. The awful stillness of the wood 

 may now and again be broken by a querulous note, 

 suppressed as soon as uttered. But the song-birds, 

 generally, are too depressed to sing or even to fly. They 

 are mute and motionless. Yet this is the time when the no 

 cooing of the stockdove is certain to be heard, sound- 

 ing hoarse and mournful from among muffling trees, 

 and when the eagle boldly soars out and upwards 

 * through the flood of day ', 



And, giving full his bosom to the blaze, 

 Gains on the sun. 



The Very properly a large part of the poem is devoted 



mating f. Q ^e cour t s hip of the birds, and the manners and 



O^/Y O/l-M * 



customs of the mating season. The males have donned 

 their sheeniest attire they are all brave wooers. The 120 

 females, conscious of their charms, affect a regardless 

 air which only inflames their admirers. Nest-building 

 is no less worthily dwelt upon. The site has to be 

 chosen, the materials collected and constructed into 

 a habitation which will answer the purposes of the 

 builders. Here Thomson is particularly happy in his 



season . 



