44 THE HOME OF THE WILLOW-WREN 



gradually becoming an index to his thoughts, 

 and more and more to be interpreted as such. 



For a while his movements suggested little 

 beyond an inquisitive restlessness. By day, 

 at any rate, he was never for a moment at 

 ease. I wondered how he could possibly fold 

 his head beneath his wing and go to sleep when 

 night stole over the fields, and I was inclined to 

 believe that even in his sleep he must fidget 

 first on the right leg, then on the left ; with his 

 head first under one wing and then beneath 

 the other. The night would appear damp and 

 chill after the warm zephyrs of the south, and 

 in the deep shadows of the hedgerows the cold 

 Would be unusually severe, and the willow- 

 warbler would feel, as we often feel when the 

 winds of spring blow from the north-east, that 

 discomfort followed him everywhere, and that 

 the long-looked-for summer must yet be far 

 away. It might be, however, that in some pre- 

 vious May, when the hawthorn blossoms beneath 

 the hazels made a sweet-scented paradise of 

 the shady hedgerow, he had opened his fledgling 

 eyes in a dome-shaped nest carefully hidden 

 in the grass, and not far from the spot to which 

 he recently returned from his latest pilgrimage. 



If I remained motionless near the hazels, 

 the warbler presently became familiar, and in 

 his intimacy ventured to give me lessons in the 



