220 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



fold " Pay-pay-pay," as some have written it, of the 

 wryneck. In tone and pitch it is rather near the 

 " J u S"J u S"J u g " f the nightingale. It is in its even- 

 ness of syllable and absence of passion that it declares 

 itself unmistakably picarian. We admit that the 

 galloping hessian shrieks, but never will we allow that 

 term to the cuckoo's mate. If the yaffle's is a horse 

 laugh, then the laugh of the wryneck is a silvery 

 feminine ripple. It is in complete tone with the 

 opening pink of the apple blossoms, the hum of bees, 

 and the scent of violets. 



We have said that our wrynecks belong to the 

 orchard. It is almost never, during their summer stay, 

 that they are seen outside that rather narrow domain. 

 It is a marked attribute of many of our summer immi- 

 grants that, between their great travels across the 

 ocean, they occupy the most limited of stations. The 

 willow-wren has its special corner of the lane, and day 

 after day can be seen sitting and singing on the same 

 arch of blackberry bramble. The spotted flycatcher 

 haunts, more or less, one perch, whence it makes its 

 dashes at passing insects. The redstart covers rather 

 more ground, because it has a nesting centre and, for 

 prudential purposes, a separate hunting centre some- 

 what removed. But its daily attendance in the same 

 hunting centre is one of the most constant phenomena 

 of summer. Most of these have skulking habits, exer- 

 cising the wing so little that you cannot help thinking 

 that, if you got one of them in the middle of a forty- 

 acre field, you would be able to run it down. Surely 

 it would never manage to fly the whole way to the 

 nearest hedge. Yet these are the birds that, without 

 the public practices that the storks, for instance, take 



