150 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



Why he (a wanderer and a lover of beech and oak) 

 selected this elm rather than the others I do not know, 

 but so it was. Not far from it on the further side of 

 the stream, where had grown fairy windflowers and 

 bluebells " at whose birth the sod scarce heaved," all 

 air, all hue, immaterial like the sigh of spring, there in 

 the meadow, I had flushed a corncrake and actually 

 put that wedge-shaped body to flight, the only corn- 

 crake I have seen for two years. 1 Here, too, the elegant 

 nuthatch came to disport himself and point and curvet 

 among the boles to the song of the blackcap and owls 

 and jays used to take it en voyage. The back-benchers 

 were in strong force, and oxeye, creeper, greenfinch, 

 chaffinch, throstle, blackbird and wren nested herein 

 or close by. Only two reared a family. But now this 

 storied orchard was utterly deserted. Nor was it really 

 curious, for one of the unwritten laws of autumnal 

 bird movements is to take to the open. 



November 12th. The fieldfares have come at last, 

 and I would meet them rushing overhead with their 

 loud chack chack, or all facing one way both on the 

 ground and in the trees, as though, as Vaughan says, 

 " expecting some hidden matter." 



I saw my redpoles again in the same place. They 

 are a well-decorated little bird, of the titmouse shape 

 and character, but of richer and deeper tints, the velvety 

 maroon of the crown throwing up the warm mottlings 

 of the back and subtly varying the rusty red (carmine 

 in spring) of the breast and black of the chin, itself 

 shading into a buffy white on the belly. One of the 

 males sat conspicuously perched at the top of a vertical 

 twig, almost motionless. Now he would dive down into 

 the field to feed, and then resume his perch ; now he 

 would spring a dozen yards into the air, turn a kind 

 of somersault, and descend again to the same perch. 

 He never bothered himself about my near approach. We 

 both enjoyed ourselves. The rooks, in spite of the 

 dull day, were holding a committee meeting in the 



1 The keeled sternum of the corncrake is, like that of the water- 

 rail, specially adapted and narrowed to enable it to plough through 

 the thick grass. 



