Birds by Land and Sea 



stubble field when the low sun lights this derelict of 

 harvest, burnishing the plain between the dark tree 

 clumps and the tracts of silent cover. Surely, it is 

 well that the land should have borne if but for this 

 late harvest of the eye. 



But, in truth, this later beauty of the year makes 

 a subtler appeal than to the senses. The eye cannot 

 rest upon it with that finality with which it was 

 content to dwell on the more obvious charms of 

 summer ; it will be glancing aside, to look before 

 and after. For it is a world of half-tones, a reflec- 

 tion of a time past and to come again ; and the 

 stubble field, the newly broken furrow, the shut 

 winter buds with their hint of far-off 7 spring, are 

 transmuted in thought into things of memory and 

 hope, and touched with the gentle unrest of the mind. 



Such days are not unfrequent during November, 

 and never fail to evoke a joyous response from the 

 feathered world. 



On the morning of the I2th November I 

 witnessed what was probably the first attempt of a 

 song-thrush to resume singing after the autumn 

 moult, and for several days I used to encounter this 

 bird practising its song on one particular perch. 

 Several others tuned up about the same time, but 

 although some attained a fairly full note after a few 

 days' practice, the singing was of a desultory, half- 

 hearted character, and was last heard on the 1 8th of 

 the month, after which it ceased abruptly, wintrier 

 weather ensuing. 



42 



