Birds by Land and Sea 



some weeks from the trees and bushes where they 

 perched and sang regularly the summer through. 

 The wren, too, was no longer heard in the darksome 

 thicket where every morning found it with its 

 grown-up brood as completely gone from its old 

 quarters as chiff-chaff and white-throat which used 

 to search the branches over his head, but which, 

 unlike him, make no profession of weathering the 

 hard season with us. 



After a week of blustering, the sou'-wester blew 

 itself out, and for a day the sun looked down from a 

 cloudless sky. Now and again a skylark sprang up 

 from nowhere into the blue, and carolled as if it 

 were a later spring. But the next day he had 

 vanished as he came. 



For there came a first touch of frost in the small 

 hours of a late September morning, and any one 

 early abroad found the spiders* webs on the hedge- 

 rows strung with microscopic pearls thousands 

 upon thousands of fly-traps transformed in one 

 magic night into as many fairy palaces, bejewelled 

 chandeliers, and what not ; yet of a beauty so 

 chastely subdued as to elude any but a closely 

 curious eye. 



With this occurred a sudden mingling of strange 

 birds among the summer lingerers in the old haunts, 

 and for a day or two the wheatear from the hills 

 played the robin on lowland clod or post ; the 

 spotted flycatcher was found in the open far from his 

 customary station ; and yellow and pied wagtails 



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