144 IMPRESSIONS OF SOME ENGLISH BIRDS. 



I shall not soon forget how my ears were beset that 

 bright May morning, two days after my arrival at 

 Glasgow, when I walked from Ayr to Alloway, a 

 course of three miles in one of the most charming and 

 fertile rural districts in Scotland. It was as warm 

 as mid-June, and the country had the most leafy and 

 luxuriant June aspect. Above a broad stretch of un- 

 dulating meadow-land on my right the larks were in 

 full song. These I knew ; these I welcomed. What 

 a sound up there, as if the sunshine was vocal ! A 

 little farther along, in a clover field, I heard my first 

 corn-crake. " Crex, crex, crex," came the harsh 

 note out of the grass, like the rasping sound of some 

 large insect, and I knew the bird at once. But when 

 I came to a beautiful grove or wood, jealously 

 guarded by a wall twelve feet high (some fine house 

 concealed back there, I saw by the entrance), what a 

 throng of strange songs and calls beset my ears ! 

 The concert was at its height. The wood fairly rang 

 and reverberated with bird voices. How loud, how 

 vivacious, almost clamorous, they sounded to me ! I 

 paused in delightful bewilderment. 



Two or three species of birds, as I afterwards 

 found, were probably making all the music I heard, 

 and of these, one species was contributing at least 

 two-thirds of it. At Alloway I tarried nearly a 

 week, putting up at a neat little inn 



" Where Doon rins, wimplin', clear," 

 and I was not long in analyzing this spirited bird 



