48 APRIL 



interest. Even the sight of a pheasant flying 

 heavily over the garden will make him yearn to 

 share the pleasure of watching it with another 

 appreciative gazer ; but this tendency is sternly 

 repressed by Sterculus. This morning, when Ster- 

 culus was engaged in clipping the edges of a flower- 

 bed, Thomas following him to pick up the bits of 

 grass, I was surprised to hear, as I thought, the 

 harsh cry of the green woodpecker from the very 

 bed on which they were engaged. When I looked 

 up there was Thomas carefully posed behind 

 Sterculus's back, a grimy finger upheld to warn 

 me that something of interest was in the very act 

 of happening, and an eye kept the while on his 

 tyrant, who was quite incapable even of realising 

 that a green woodpecker's note had been sounded 

 to attract my attention. I listened, and from the 

 grove on the far hillside came the call, so long 

 expected and this year so long delayed " Cuckoo! 

 cuckoo ! " 



I wonder if the notes of the cuckoo vary in 

 different countries. In Beethoven's Scene am 

 Bach his song is given as D natural and B flat. 

 Our cuckoos certainly have a higher register. I 

 have never tested their notes with a pitch pipe very 

 early in the season, but in the last week of last 

 June I remember to have found all the cuckoos 

 singing F natural to D flat. If the song is D 

 natural to B flat when he first comes over and 

 then changes to F natural and D flat, this would 

 account for the assertion in the old rhyme - 



"In leafy June 

 He'll change his tune." 



