74 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



them, sometimes quite straight, more often bent 

 near the breast like a crooked piece of copper wire. 

 A strange appearance! everything stiff and abrupt, 

 odd-looking, uncouth, no graceful curves or sweeps. 

 The long legs, carried horizontally, balance the 

 neck behind but grotesquely, as one gargoyle glares 

 at another. Thus herons fly within the heronry, 

 but as they sail out, en voyage, the head is drawn 

 back between the shoulders, in the more familiar 

 way. As morning dawns, the shadowy " air-drawn'' 

 forms begin to appear more substantially. Several 

 of the birds may then be seen perched about in 

 the trees, some gaunt and upright, others hunched 

 up in a heap, with, perhaps, one statuesque figure 

 placed, like a sentinel, on the top of a tall, slender 

 larch, the thin pinnacle of the trunk of which is 

 bent over to form a perch. 



Other, and much sweeter, sounds begin now to 

 mingle with the harsh, though not unpleasing 

 screams, and, increasing every moment in volume, 

 make them, at last, but part of a universal and most 

 divine harmony. The whole plantation has become 

 a song. Song-thrush and mistle-thrush make it up, 

 mostly, between them, but all help, and all is a 

 music ; chatters and twitters seem glorified, nothing 

 sounds harshly, joy makes it melody. There is a 

 time the daylight of dawn, but not daylight 

 when the birds sing everywhere, as though to salute 

 it. As the real daylight comes, this sinks and 

 almost ceases, and never in the whole twenty-four 

 hours, is there such an hour again. The laugh, 

 and answering laugh, of the green woodpecker is 

 frequent, now, and mingles sweetly with the loud 

 cooing of the wood-pigeons not the characteristic 



