60 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



seems the desire of something uncapturable, and so an 

 impression of something unachieved the goal of all 

 poetry and religion, human and natural, which is never 

 reached. His cousin sings a more routine music without 

 fieriness of heart and within his own horizon. It is 

 appropriate, therefore, to be able to see the garden 

 warbler easily and the blackcap with difficulty, and 

 that the one seems to shun the presence of the other 

 as the more inspired master who outshines his domestic 

 fire. They sometimes, however, sing together. 



If summer is the fulfilment of desire, spring is the 

 ardour of the year, and the greening earth seems to 

 ferment with melody, which bubbles into a confused 

 shrilling when the young birds begin to shout for 

 food. An oak-wood near the town was so thick with 

 young starlings that one might almost imagine the 

 trees were made of metal leaves beaten thin, susurrating 

 together when the wind stirred them. In the diffused 

 chorus of more familiar songs and calls, so copious in 

 favoured places that the air seems to vibrate with them, 

 it is a rare pleasure to catch the notes of less common 

 birds. A pair of long-tailed tits disport themselves 

 among the branches, their minute bodies drifting through 

 the trees like animated balls of down, come away with 

 a long black stem, and the male now and again throws 

 out a low and tender call to his mate, different from 

 the insect-like zee zee of more prosaic feelings. I have 

 heard the wryneck, a rare bird in the West of England, 

 in this wood (on April 2nd), but I have never seen him 

 there, his mocking, penetrating, mysterious puy 9 puy, 

 puy enticing me on to seek his richly-mottled form in 

 vain, like a horn of Elfland tempting a lost traveller 

 into deeper and deeper recesses of the forest. Here, too, 

 the nuthatch pealed out his clear tui, tui, and I have 

 been so lucky as to have eight or nine jays passing over 

 my head in the crowns of the trees, uttering a subdued 

 and more musical version of the familiar scream. They 

 were all in great excitement, and were, I expect, on their 

 way to one of their spring concerts. Until nesting 

 operations actually begin, jays are rather more than 

 less social in the nuptial season. 



