II 

 GARDEN WARBLER 



really charming little bird is certainly one of 

 my woodland favourites. His loud song almost 

 rivals that of the Blackcap, his near relative. 



In a delightful Middlesex orchard, where I 

 once loved to roam, and where I first learned to 

 love birds an orchard which, alas ! is now being invaded by the 

 builder the Garden Warbler was common, and many a nest I 

 found in the gooseberry-bushes under the old apple-trees. In the 

 days and hours of spring, when the blossom-covered trees were 

 full of sweet music, and those jewels of May orange-tip butterflies 

 flitted their little lives away in a world of sunshine and song, I 

 almost lived, fed as it were, with the happy love-talk of Warblers 

 and Thrushes ; the twitter of Swallows, skimming over the sea of 

 bloom, and the deep, lasting hum of a million insects' wings. And 

 through it all I loved my Garden Warblers with a great and 

 lasting love, for were they not one of the first birds to tell me that 

 the Spring the Spring that I almost worshipped had dropped her 

 mantle on the land, covering the meadows, the orchards, and the 

 woods, which not long before were held in old winter's icy grip of 

 death, with new life, joyous sunshine, and filling them with Nature's 

 sweetest music and happy wild love ; for the Garden Warbler's song 

 speaks of love every note rings with it, and the birds themselves 



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