CLEANING-UP TIME 279 



gone, the dull and gloomy souls that are left. It 

 is not so, however. The gayest-plumaged bird 

 that comes for the summer only is the redstart, 

 and he is easily matched in the same tribe by the 

 stonechat, whose black cap, snow-white collar, 

 and magenta breast still decorate the gorse, whose 

 yellow blossoms they outshone in July. Instead 

 of the reddish-brown nightingale, we keep the 

 handsome robin, more in evidence when the world 

 is frozen under snow than when the hedges were 

 smothered with June roses. 



The swallows are all gone, down to the dingy 

 sand martin, but the finches present one solid 

 phalanx of winter-abiding birds. There is not 

 a dull feather among them. The larch wood is 

 full of trees of fog, the needles which were the 

 greenest of spring having turned almost to straw- 

 colour. Now the towy bristles are falling, as the 

 chaffinches hop among them, resplendent in slate- 

 purple, rose, and brilliant white shoulder-knots. 

 The rose bushes are being stripped by green- 

 finches in olive green and black, with flight feathers 

 like solid gold. The thistles are winter provender 

 for red-cheeked goldfinches, more golden of wing 

 than the greenfinches, and with legs as though en- 

 cased in thigh boots spotlessly pipe-clayed. The 

 privet berries are not so black as the cap of 

 the bullfinch that loves to eat them, and the 

 hips are not rosier than his broad breast, whose 

 feathers curl like little waves over his stiff blue 

 wing. 



