WOODCOCK SHOOTING. 75 



is heard, save the single melancholy call of the 

 blue-bird,* borne from afar on the rising blast, 

 which, as it rattles the naked boughs overhead, 

 or whirls the dead leaves at your feet, imparts 

 even a touch of menace to the sere look of the 

 scene. 



Perhaps while reflecting on the changes of 

 season, you are insensibly led to dwell on a ver- 

 dure which nought can restore ; or it may be 

 you are in that dreamy, short-lived mood which 

 is so apt to enfold a man's inmost spirit as he 

 watches day -light darken in the sky ; while the 

 old farmer, whose progenitors, for four genera- 

 tions, have lived and died on the place, halts at 

 your side, internally wondering what it is that 

 you see in the west, where the sun has just sunk 

 in your sight, behind some distant hill. 



Suddenly you hear a discordant cry, and ob- 

 serve a bird which has just risen from the low 



* This call or plaint, which is the bird's common note when 

 migrating in autumn, is also heard early in the spring, when a 

 recurrence of wintry weather drives it back to the south, from 

 whence too early it came. 



The note is generally uttered high in the air, and has a very dif- 

 ferent effect upon the ear from the soft and delicate warble with 

 which every lover of spring is familiar, and which, when heard 

 amid the fragrance of May, would seem the very outpourings of a 

 gratulatory and innocent joy. 



