4 BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



E scar got de Bourgogne does to us, well may he seek it far 

 and wide. 



At this season, too, he delights in fighting his rivals, 

 and you may see them rolling over and over in battle 

 on the marsh-walls or by the roadside. At eventide, too, 

 when the grey mists are closing over the lush flatland, 

 you may hear the cock-birds singing around you until dark- 

 ness hides the landscape, when he suddenly stops his song, 

 being followed by the screech of the owl. 



When the bitter winds of March blow dryly over the 

 land, the mavises begin to build their mud-fashioned cradles, 

 laying their sky-blue speckled eggs long ere the last chill 

 snows have fallen. Indeed, you may see some snowy day 

 a hen sitting in the heart of a bare thorn-tree, her head 

 resting on the edge of the nest, her feathers shot, her tail 

 contracted, looking like a serpent, her lustrous eyes staring 

 at you through the cold snow-crystals as they fall, powdering 

 the bleak marshlands till the rivers look like leaden skeins 

 threading a white world. At any time up to harvest you 

 may find the mavis sitting, for if robbed she will build again 

 and again; and all through the bright-flowered spring and 

 warm-scented summer you may come upon the young birds, 

 bright in colour, flying chiefly through sallow coverts, gorse 

 coppices, and hedgerows that lead to the uplands, or mayhap 

 skulking in clumps of undergrowth of gorse on the river-walls. 

 Should the lone marshman possess a black-heart cherry-tree 

 in hn> j*arden ; on a,pat(Jh of strawberries, the thrush knows 

 it, a'oS.you .wfll 'S^e "him. running briskly over the ground 

 under ^e iQWe^.br^cties^or hopping lightly upon the light 

 sppigs' berrt* 'down 'with fruit, or else pecking daintily at a 

 luscious British queen strawberry in the patch. Nor is he 

 averse from currants and gooseberries, and the marshman, 

 who knows this, keeps watch over his scanty unpruned 

 bushes with old muzzle-loader, as many a mavis and black- 

 bird knows full well ; for often the child-like screams of the 

 maimed birds resound far and near. A cinder-heap, too, is 



