THE NIGHTINGALE AND ITS HAUNTS 63 



The tide is falling fast. Back to lowing a sinuous drain that forms a 

 the flats come the curlews, and the sort of tributary to the river-like 

 redshanks, and the smaller waders from Duff ell's drain, which cuts Breydon 

 the marshes, knowing the times of rise diagonally almost exactly into two. 

 and fall as if they worked by tide- The upper portion of Breydon we have 

 table. All the waders seem hungry not had time to explore to-day. At 

 again. The whimbrel are leaving the the entrance of Duff ell's drain, where 

 rond and joining the curlews. Small it joins the main Channel, lies moored 

 gulls, wearied of their fishing in the the watcher's houseboat, to which 

 Channel, make for the bare mud- we make fast for half an hour's 

 patches to rest awhile. The herons gossip, "and to compare notes. We 

 have gone back with their catches need not hurry, for it is an easy half- 

 to their nesting quarters at Reed- hour's pull downstream to our boat- 

 ham. We quant across Breydon, fol- shed. 



XIII 

 THE NIGHTINGALE AND ITS HAUNTS 



" There is something in it of Divinity more than the ear discovers ; it is an hieroglyphical 

 and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and creatures of God ; such a melody to the ear, as 

 the whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding." 



SiR THOMAS BROWNE. 



TN the April days when the mist of grows fuller and more intricately 

 green has already deepened in varied under the sun and the soft 

 the larches, but before the canopy of spring winds. The willow- wren joins 

 denser foliage has yet unfolded upon the chiffchaff in the half -clothed boughs 

 hazel and beech and elm, the covers of the copse ; the wryneck's shout is 

 and woodsides of all but the northern heard once more in the leafless limbs 

 and western fringes of England begin of the oak, and the bittersweet babble 

 to thrill by night and day with the of the sedge-warbler brings a stir of 

 passion of the song of the nightingale, bustling life to the dry reeds and green- 

 Day by day, as the throngs of the tagged willows of the pool. New 

 summer birds come home from the voices mingle every morning in the 

 south, the mounting tide of music daily increasing chorus of all the song- 



