CHAPTER XXIII 

 THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 



NEVER is earth more empty of life than during the early 

 days of March before the first of the migrants have 

 returned to us. The brighter sun serves only to show 

 the nakedness of nature and make us conscious of its 

 silence. For since the autumn, through all the cold, 

 hungry winter months, the destroyer has been busy 

 among the creatures that stayed behind when half the 

 bird population forsook the land ; the survivors now 

 seem but a remnant. To-day, with a bleak wind blow- 

 ing from the north-east, the sun shining from a hard 

 pale grey sky, the wide grass and ploughed fields seem 

 emptier and more desolate than ever, and tired of my 

 vain search for living things I am glad to get to the 

 shelter of a small isolated copse, by a tiny stream, at 

 the lower end of a long sloping field. It can hardly 

 be called a copse since it is composed of no more than 

 about a dozen or twenty old wide-branching oak 

 trees growing in a thicket of thorn, hazel, holly, and 

 bramble bushes. It is the best place on such a day, 

 and finding a nice spot to stand in, well sheltered from 

 the wind, I set myself to watch the open space before 

 me. It is shut in by huge disordered brambles, and 

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