From Fox's Earth 



blackbird is screaming by the copse, the robin 

 crackling from the mountain-ash, the hedge- warbler 

 piping in the shadow of the fence, one spirit is at 

 work throughout. The energy of sunset, the after- 

 glow which steals up from below the western slope 

 of the world, sets, or finds everything astir. 



The vesper is universal. Whether social, or 

 solitary, life is abnormally noisy and active. It 

 is even startling, this sudden awakening from the 

 drowsiness of the afternoon. At a certain hour 

 of the winter day, just before sleep, a wave of 

 influence, subtle as the flow of magnetism, passes 

 through nature ; an unseen hand runs over the 

 strings of life and awakens them to octaves of sound. 



Feeding in the same field, with greenfinch and 

 linnet, were a vast number of starlings. In and 

 out, on their restless way, they ran among the 

 stubble. Just when the linnets left for the roost 

 the starlings rose. Then came a time of merry 

 madness. As though suddenly possessed they 

 scurried from fence to fence. They turned. In 

 midfield they spread out like a fan. They 

 dropped again, to re-form and dart away afresh. 

 There was no purpose in their flight, only a series 

 of mad antics. No two motions were alike. Each 

 wild whim was on the wing ; each bird seemed 

 bent on letting himself go ; and that as a prelude 

 to a concert at the roost, to which the vesper of 

 the linnets is as silence. 



In a flock of many hundreds, the lapwings came 

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