i* l l , i TTT 



t V : ^ * : * I 



f{ >: : Y : \ H4J$ ^AWAKENED BIRDS 



AT daybreak on an early August morning there is 

 nothing of the rapture of bird song that begins at 

 this hour in May and June and early July. It 

 seems that now, as at most times of year, the first 

 to awake is the redbreast. I omit the skylark, 

 for now it is mostly silent. In June it is the earliest 

 of all, beginning at the first faint glimmer of dawn. 

 Later, the blackbird is very early, the song thrush 

 too ; whilst returning to early spring the missel 

 thrush now and then sings as if he were a night bird, 

 like the sedge warbler and the nightingale. The 

 missel thrush will sing in the moonlight.* The 

 cuckoo at the zenith of May approaches the skylark 

 as a very early singer. But, taking the year through, 

 I doubt if any bird note at dawn is so constant and 

 familiar as the faithful redbreast's sharp " it-it-it." 

 It is not good often to be lying awake at this hour, 

 yet something of rare virtue is in these prime notes 

 of dawn. 



In early August the next contribution is the long- 

 drawn " chre-e-e-ee " of greenfinches. That lively 



* I have never heard him singing then, but my friend, 

 Ralph Hodgson, heard him singing in brilliant moonlight 

 in April 1904, I think, at Weston, in Hampshire. 



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