44 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



awake, and if they will not compose the mind for 

 sleep, I know of nothing in Nature that can do so. 



Equal, perhaps, to the pleasure of hearing the 

 first October thrush is the pleasure of seeing him 

 hi the act of song. In the dark yew tree, dotted 

 with scarlet, I saw the speckled throat of a thrush 

 in song. This makes a lovely picture of bird, fruit, 

 and tree. But, so far, the song is a preface ; just 

 a little piping. Not one of the bold, distinctive 

 thrush phrases lives in it, or will for many weeks 

 to come. Looking at the thrush in the grand gloom 

 of the yew, at first I only recognise for sure it is 

 this particular thrush that is singing by the direction 

 the sound travels ; it is several seconds before I can 

 detect the slight movements of the throat, the ruffling 

 of the feathers there ; the thrush does not yet throw 

 up its head, put its soul into song. With the skylark 

 it is otherwise. Early in October, when thrushes are 

 piping faintly between gusty storms, larks will fight 

 and sing as if it were spring. They choose the dullest, 

 the wettest days of the early autumn, what we should 

 call foul weather. True, instead of a dozen larks 

 singing over a large field, there may be only two 

 or three, but these will shrill with something of the 

 fervour of larks in May. 



The more we notice the singing of birds out of 

 the mating and nesting time, the more baffling does 

 the thing grow. Now it seems as if soft, bright 

 weather were the chief incentive to bird song in 



