5 4 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



midland streams, and all places where good nesting- 

 holes, and abundant insect food, and plentiful water 

 can be found; and no one who is used to see him 

 daily and hourly in such places would expect to 

 find him in equal plenty in a drier climate. 



But to return to the Welsh hills. Here in June 

 it is still spring ; such hedges as there are here are 

 still white with hawthorn blossom, and the wild 

 roses have hardly begun to bloom. The grass even 

 here in the valley is short enough for me : a short, 

 thick undergrowth of flowers, with enough of taller 

 grasses to suggest that it is meant for hay. But 

 about these fields, and round the fine solid new 

 church, which stands at the junction of two moun- 

 tain streams, the Sand-martins are busy, reminding 

 me of the richer water-meadows I have left behind 

 me in England. The Sand-martins took me by 

 surprise : in old days I never noticed them, and 

 never learnt to associate them with water that talks 

 as it runs. About Oxford, where they are perhaps 

 in greater numbers than in any other haunt of mine, 

 their conversation is unbroken by the noise of water ; 

 and in the silence of a still summer evening it forces 

 itself on your attention, for there is nothing but your 

 own thoughts to rival it. Here, as I stood in the 

 churchyard, with the streams and the Sand-martins 

 chatting all around me, there seemed to be much 

 more life and stir than by the silent Thames in the 



