Birds by Land and Sea 



season ; but the hardest time to face is these late 

 summer days, when the leaf is turning, song is 

 damped or silenced, the hill breeders first appear in 

 the lowland fields, and the packing of the birds 

 suggests the closer association of winter, or prepara- 

 tion for the general exodus, the time of which draws 

 near. Beauty is there, beauty of all sorts scattered 

 with both hands ; but it is the beauty of sunset, the 

 prodigality of colour which for a time grows richer 

 and richer with the waning light. 



This orchard is an old one plenty of black 

 knotty wood above, and a sea of rhubarb below. 

 In the spring evenings the birds go wild here mad, 

 I had almost said for the torrent of song at that 

 time is indescribable. It had always one ending 

 the lingering song of the robin perched high in the 

 dark, a song pure and perfect enough to challenge 

 the critical ear of night. 



The sparrow-hawk knows this orchard too, but 

 never enters it. He comes over the river at the 

 back of it, settles to the ground, and follows at a 

 break-neck speed a line outside the enclosing hedge, 

 clears the cross-hedge at the other end, and, dropping 

 at once to the ground again, scours the field beyond 

 like a dog on the trail. This beat of the sparrow- 

 hawk was a regular one, for I have met it scores of 

 times at about the same time at the cross-hedge, 

 and watched it vanish on the same line through the 

 fields. 



In the spring and summer mornings the willow 

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