BIRD VISITORS 273 



four species, and the wren, tree-creeper, nut-hatch, and 

 many more. The best vocalists had ceased singing ; 

 the last nightingale I had heard utter its full song was 

 in the oak woods of Beaulieu on June 27 : and now 

 all the tree- warblers, and with them chaffinch, thrush, 

 blackbird, and robin, had become silent. The wren was 

 the leading songster, beginning his bright music at four 

 o'clock in the morning, and the others, still hi song, 

 that visited me were the greenfinch, goldfinch, swallow, 

 dunnock, and cirl bunting. From my seat I could also 

 hear the songs in the valley of the reed and sedge 

 warblers, reed-bunting, and grasshopper-warbler. These, 

 and the polyglot starling, and cooing and crooning 

 doves, made the last days of July at this spot seem not 

 the silent season we are accustomed to call it. 



Of these singers the goldfinch was the most pleasing. 

 The bird that sang near me had assisted in rearing a 

 brood in a nest on a low branch a few yards away, but 

 he still returned from the fields at intervals to sing ; and 

 seen, as I now saw him a dozen times a day, perched 

 among the lime leaves and blossoms at the end of a 

 slender bough, in his black and gold and crimson 

 livery, he was by far the prettiest of my feathered 

 visitors. 



But the cirl bunting, the inferior singer, interested 

 me most, for I am somewhat partial to the buntings, 

 and he is the best of them, and the one I knew least 

 about from personal observation. 



On my way hither at the end of June, somewhere 



