ROUND A LONDON COPSE 135 



woods, here they were close to the house and garden, 

 constantly heard, and almost always visible ; and London, 

 too, so near. They seemed almost as familiar as the 

 sparrows and starlings. 



These pigeons were new inhabitants ; but turtle-doves 

 had built in the copse since I knew it. They were late 

 coming the last spring I watched them ; but, when they 

 did, chose a spot much nearer the house than usual. 

 The turtle-dove has a way of gurgling the soft vowels 

 " oo " in the throat. Swallows do not make a summer, 

 but when the turtle-dove coos summer is certainly come. 

 One afternoon one of the pair flew up into a hornbeam 

 which stood beside the garden not twenty yards at 

 farthest. At first he sat upright on the branch watch- 

 ing me below, then turned and fluttered down to the 

 nest beneath. 



While this nesting was going on I could hear five 

 different birds at once either in the garden or from any 

 of the windows. The doves cooed, and every now and 

 then their gentle tones were overpowered by the loud 

 call of the wood-pigeons. A cuckoo called from the top 

 of the tallest birch, and a nightingale and a brook-sparrow 

 (or sedge-reedling) were audible together in the common 

 on the opposite side of the road. It is remarkable that 

 one season there seems more of one kind of bird than 

 the next. The year alluded to, for instance, in this copse 

 was the wood-pigeons' year. But one season previously 

 the copse seemed to belong to the missel-thrushes. 



Early in the March mornings I used to wake as the 

 workmen's trains went rumbling by to the great City, to 

 see on the ceiling by the window a streak of sunlight, 

 tinted orange by the vapour through which the level 

 beams had passed. Something in the sense of morning 

 lifts the heart up to the sun. The light, the air, the 



