October 



the old nests, and arranged on some near branch to 

 form new ones, the birds working in pairs. They 

 seem never wholly to demolish the old nest, or to 

 complete the new one ; and apparently are not yet 

 sufficiently assured of the return of spring to go 

 afield for new material. The first inclement day 

 dispels the illusion, and the nests are left as they are, 

 in every stage of demolition and reconstruction. 



On one such bright morning, the last of October, 

 a yellow-hammer, which had been missing for the 

 greater part of a month from his accustomed station, 

 returned to the top of a thorn, where he had perched 

 and sung almost every morning during the summer, 

 and on the hedge below were four young ones, 

 brilliant in their new yellow bonnets just acquired at 

 the autumn moult. Two days later, a company of 

 wrens were back in a tangle of dead bramble, where 

 they had seldom failed to make themselves heard until 

 late in September, when they suddenly disappeared. 

 From a prominent elm branch the corn-bunting 

 notified his reappearance by his strange song, which 

 opens with three or four detached notes a kind of 

 musical stuttering, preluding a precipitate trill which 

 runs up into a continuous, shrilly modulated scream 

 a song to become notable as time went on by its 

 continuance throughout the winter months into the 

 spring. The blackbird, which suffered a temporary 

 eclipse during September, became increasingly visible 

 during October ; but neither he nor the song-thrush 

 was yet to be heard in song. Missel-thrushes 



33 D 



