172 Autumn 



tending their nests they were hunting food for them 

 selves or their offspring ; but in September every 

 householder of the forest is the head of a grown-up 

 family. There are more birds now than at any other 

 time of the year, for of all those broods it is astonishing 

 what a small percentage will survive the ravages of 

 winter. It is with them as with the oak that bears a 

 million acorns of which perchance not one will become 

 a tree, or with the fish that deposits several hundred 

 thousand eggs in a season without sensibly adding to 

 the population of the river. Ere nesting time comes 

 again, boys and birdcatchers, net and trap, weasel, 

 hawk, and disease, frost, snow, and farmer, will have 

 slain these songsters by the hundred. Nature carries 

 on the living world at a huge cost in bloodshed and 

 suffering. 



The characteristic bird of the forest is in autumn, 

 I think, the jay. He is growing very scarce in many 

 places, for keepers give him short shrift on account of 

 his egg-stealing propensities ; yet he is so active and 

 amusing, and the number of our brightly-coloured 

 birds is so small, that one would like to crave some 

 quarter for him. In September I see dozens of them 

 in the woods, but not very clearly, for if the jay catches 

 sight of anyone approaching the oak under which he 

 is foraging, he rushes into the thicket with a flash of 

 his blue and white feathers and a harsh cry like that 

 of a crow before nesting time. The shriek which is 

 taken up in this tree and in that, and a flying and 



