228 WILD BIRDS 



thrush does but who never rises, as the song-thrush 

 rises in spring, to a very choice distinction. 



The missel-thrush being a shy bird, save when it 

 lives at the outskirts of towns, is heard as a rule from 

 a distance, and the song does not strike us then as 

 very powerful. But, when we hear the song under 

 the tree where the bird is singing, the effect is very 

 different. The song is louder then than the other 

 thrush's ; it is as loud as the blackbird's perhaps 

 at full strength. Just before writing this I chanced 

 to hear the missel-thrush in a tree under which I 

 stood, and I believe I never heard a blackbird sing 

 louder. It is hard to recognise in these powerful, 

 tumultuous notes the mild song of the distant missel- 

 thrush in the woods or fields on a calm, bright 

 winter morning. The missel-thrush gains sweetness 

 through distance. 



THE WIND'S PLAY 



There is no time of year when the curious eddies 

 of the air and the Pucklike pranks of the wind can be 

 seen better than early spring. March is a month of 

 whirly-puffs. The winds will often play the oddest 

 tricks with fine dust on the highways and dry, dead 

 leaves at the edge of the coppices. The game with 

 the leaves is strangest of all. Leaves at the fall of 

 the year are scattered, gathered, and whisked about 

 the ground and air in a very striking way. They 

 behave as though they had a wayward, wild will of 

 their own, flitting, pattering, running races, slapping 



