64 FRESH WOODS. 



birds, but I hope I may be permitted to love 

 them without a scientific knowledge of their 

 habits, manners, and migrations. I welcome 

 them when they pay me a visit, and it 

 pleases me in leisure moments to watch their 

 antics, and their little bright-eyed, tricky 

 ways. 



I am constantly reminded of the country 

 by the songs of blackbirds and thrushes ; 

 robins and wrens are regular visitors. Occa- 

 sionally I see in my apple trees chaffinches 

 and green linnets, while starlings on my lawn 

 and tomtits in the silver birch and mulberry 

 trees are always quite at home. I have also 

 seen, in the summer months, a pretty, shy 

 little bird with a wailing note, breaking out 

 sometimes into a sweet and clear warble, 

 which I take to be "the garden warbler." It 

 is very difficult to get sight of this bird, for it 

 sings in amongst the leaves, and the moment 

 one begins to look for it, it stops short in its 

 song and is off like a dart. 



In the little field in front of us we frequently 

 have a pair or two of skylarks, though why 

 they should come away from the beautiful 

 meadows in the far-off country and pour forth 

 their "music sweet as love" in the murky, 

 foggy sky that generally overhangs that field 

 I know not, unless they come out of pure 



