60 WILD BIRDS 



not hesitate to include in the clock. It is a very early 

 morning singer in July and August, striking up, I 

 feel sure, at the same state of light dawn after 

 dawn. Waking very early one summer morning 

 and hearing the elfin air of swallows at the window- 

 sill is a thing not soon forgotten. The swallow song 

 is made up of a multitude of minute melodies all 

 low in key and sweet. It is a quick little jumble 

 of a song, without art and power, but the effect is 

 delightful, and when we hear it before we are wide 

 awake, there is something fairylike in the thing. 



The song-thrush may not tell the time so pre- 

 cisely in the morning as he often tells it in the 

 evening ; still, he can tell it then, I fancy, to within 

 half an hour. He is one of the very early musicians 

 one of the last to drop to sleep, one of the first 

 to wake. I think he is usually awake some time 

 before the blackbird, though it chances that on the 

 list I have given only five minutes separate the two. 

 The redbreast comes after the thrush, when the 

 cuckoo is not shouting ; but the cuckoo, when in 

 a song, may be awake and a-wing even with the 

 skylark. I often hear him soon after the first faint 

 glimmering of light, and now and then in the 

 middle of the night in May and June. But the cuckoo 

 is calling at any hour then ; he is of no use for the 

 bird clock. 



Sleep is so precious infinitely precious where 

 its quantity is small and so perishable that we 

 cannot value highly anything that hurts it. I 

 I cannot say nightingales ever robbed me of sleep, 



