ROUND A LONDON COPSE 145 



woods and far-away lonely places. It is so commonplace 

 and unpretentious that passers-by do not notice it ; it is 

 merely a corner of meadow dotted with apple trees a 

 place that needs frequent glances and a dreamy mood 

 to understand it as the birds understand it. They are 

 always there. In spring, thrushes move along, rustling 

 the fallen leaves as they search among the arum sheaths 

 unrolling beside the sheltering palings. There are nooks 

 and corners whence shy creatures can steal out from the 

 shadow and be happy. There is a loving streak of 

 sunshine somewhere among the tree trunks. 



Though the copse is so much frequented the migrant 

 birds (which have now for the most part gone) next 

 spring will not be seen nor heard there first. With one 

 exception, it is not the first place to find them. The 

 cuckoos which come to the copse do not call till some 

 time after others have been heard in the neighbourhood. 

 There is another favourite copse a mile distant, and the 

 cuckoo can be heard near it quite a week earlier. This 

 last spring there were two days' difference a marked 

 interval. 



The nightingale that sings in the bushes on the com- 

 mon immediately opposite the copse is late in the same 

 manner. There is a mound about half a mile farther, 

 where a nightingale always sings first, before all the others 

 of the district. The one on the common began to sing 

 last spring a full week later. On the contrary, the sedge- 

 reedling, which chatters side by side with the nightingale, 

 is the first of all his kind to return to the neighbourhood. 

 The same thing happens season after season, so that 

 when once you know these places you can always hear 

 the birds several days before other people. 



With flowers it is the same ; the lesser celandine, the 

 marsh marigold, the silvery cardamine, appear first in 



