BIRDS AND THEIR VOYAGES 83 



least as marked as the part he plays in our south- 

 country woods and shrubberies when the leaf is falling 

 thickly and the air smells of the must of autumn. 



The darker the day, with the greater spirit, so it 

 seems to one on the moors as in our home woods, he 

 sings. This may be fancy. The mists and melancholy 

 of autumn seem so unstimulating for song that the 

 redbreast's lay comes to us as something of a surprise, 

 season after season, and we may tend to exaggerate its 

 vigour in such discouraging conditions for music. 

 Yet if the redbreast be not really livelier, higher 

 spirited, in the drizzle and darkening afternoons of 

 October, he is not less a singer then than in clear, 

 sunny weather. 



There is always a tendency to find virtues in rarity 

 that we miss in abundance in the common-known 

 things of each day. This is so in our view of Nature 

 as in our view of other things. The redstart, which 

 flashes among the stone walls of these moorland byres 

 in summer, is rare compared with the redbreast. So 

 he has more beauty and interest for many bird 

 admirers. But what living thing is such a noteworthy 

 feature of a natural season as the redbreast ? Shelley 

 wrote of the " swallow-summer " and of the " owlet- 

 night " ; the redbreast is more in the very tissue of 

 the fall of the year, in its woof and weft, than the 

 swallow is in that of summer or the owl in that of 

 night. He is spread everywhere high and low ; is 

 in wood, hedgerow, farmyard, orchard, in lonely places 



