NATURE NEAR LONDON 



nearer the house than usual. The turtle-dove has 

 a way of gurgling the soft vowels " oo " in the 

 throat. Swallows do not make a summer, but 

 when the turtle-dove coos summer is certainly 

 come. One afternoon one of the pair flew up 

 into a hornbeam which stood beside the garden not 

 twenty yards at farthest. At first he sat upright 

 on the branch watching me below, then turned and 

 fluttered down to the nest beneath. 



While this nesting was going on I could hear 

 five different birds at once either in the garden or 

 from any of the windows. The doves cooed, and 

 every now and then their gentle tones were over- 

 powered by the loud call of the wood-pigeons. A 

 cuckoo called from the top of the tallest birch, and 

 a nightingale and a brook-sparrow (or sedge- 

 reedling) were audible together in the common on 

 the opposite side of the road. It is remarkable that 

 one season there seems more of one kind of bird 

 than the next. The year alluded to, for instance, 

 in this copse was the wood-pigeons' year. But 

 one season previously the copse seemed to belong 

 to the missel-thrushes. 



Early in the March mornings I used to wake 

 as the workmen's trains went rumbling by to the 

 great City, to see on the ceiling by the window a 

 streak of sunlight, tinted orange by the vapour 

 through which the level beams had passed. Some- 

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