ROUND A LONDON COPSE 



The apple trees are not set in straight lines : 

 they were at first, but some have died away and 

 left an irregularity ; the trees lean this way and 

 that, and they are scarred and marked as it were 

 with lichen and moss. It is the home of birds. 

 A blackbird had its nest this spring in the bushes 

 on the left side, a nightingale another in the bushes 

 on the right, and there the nightingale sang under 

 the shadow of a hornbeam for hours every morning 

 while " City " men were hurrying past to their 

 train. 



The sharp relentless shrike that used to live by 

 the copse moved up here, and from that very horn- 

 beam perpetually darted across the road upon in- 

 sects in the fern and furze opposite. He never 

 entered the orchard ; it is often noticed that birds 

 (and beasts of prey) do not touch creatures that 

 build near their own nests. . Several thrushes re- 

 side in the orchard ; swallows frequently twittered 

 from the tops of the apple trees. As the grass is 

 so safe from intrusion, one of the earliest butter- 

 cups flowers here. Bennets the flower of the 

 grass come up; the first bennet is to green 

 things what the first swallow is to the breathing 

 creatures of summer. 



On a bare bough, but lately scourged by the 

 east wind, the apple bloom appears, set about with 

 the green of the hedges and the dark spruce be- 

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