BIRDS AND THEIR VOYAGES 79 



They belong to a stage in the season slightly more 

 advanced than the first charming days of delicate 

 but undoubted autumn. I should not call them 

 exactly delicate days, nor soft ; there is relish about 

 the morning air a little shock in it. It is ah* 

 charged with exhilaration ; and when we go out 

 into it after breakfast, to find the mist lifting off 

 the near range of hills, and the redbreasts all sing- 

 ing and sparring, the effect is electric. A curing 

 property lives in such mornings. There is no mis- 

 taking the effect which this autumn air has on us; 

 body and mind are set up by it. Life is so sensitive 

 to weather. There are days all through the year 

 which dull the surface of life : these days, sharp and 

 bright, put a burnish on it. 



The days I mean come during the seeding time 

 of autumn, and this is when we see lively titmice 

 at their liveliest. Years ago, a friend who knows 

 well the marsh titmouse, told me it preferred the 

 seeds of the giant sunflower to all others. I know 

 now he was right : it is essentially the sunflower 

 titmouse. The marsh titmouse is commoner than 

 some people suppose. I find it almost everywhere 

 I go. It is not well named, being at least as fond 

 of woods and large hedgerows as of marshes and 

 river banks. As the blue- tit knows exactly when 

 to come for poppy seed, and the cole-tit for beech 

 mast, so the marsh-tit appears on the scene just 

 when the sunflower nuts are ready. Blue- tits and 



