206 WILD BIRDS 



than three or four seconds, and seems to vary very 

 little, if at all, in length." 



The clearly seen vibration of the full-stretched 

 wing tells its own story : there must be sound 

 plenty of sound coming from this action ; and what 

 can this sound be but the bleat or drumming ? I 

 cannot understand how any one who has watched 

 the vibrant wing of the descending snipe and who 

 knows what commotion and sound a stiff feather 

 attacking the air will make can doubt this. 



Do the individual feathers of the wing and also, 

 perhaps, of the tail in making the sound, cut through 

 the air, I wonder, with an eight-like action ? I 

 think it quite likely they do, and if we could but 

 trace their course we should see signs here, too, of 

 the " inexorable " figure ; for a feather is twisted 

 on itself as the whole wing is twisted. 



THE RARER MUSIC 



There is something in the late autumn and the 

 winter music of birds, slight though it be, that is 

 entirely charming. Perhaps the appeal the song 

 makes to one in autumn is even more than the appeal 

 in the winter, for in autumn we seem so very far off 

 from spring. It is especially so in hours of illness. 

 I know I have managed to get good out of the songs 

 of two birds when, through illness, scarcely anything 

 else in Nature has seemed good " life a fury slinging 

 flame and time a maniac scattering dust." 



I have got it especially through the missel-thrush 

 and the delightful little cirl bunting. The missel- 



