THE MOST EVENTFUL DATE izi 



we must put down the willow-warbler among the best. 

 I heard him first that spring on April 16. He stood on a 

 low bush, and as he sang swayed his head this way and 

 that, and so helped the wavering intensity of the song ; 

 and the gestures diminished with the natural cadence of 

 the notes. We heard and saw in the same place, and at 

 closer quarters, a robin in full spring song. His piece has 

 little regularity of form, like the willow-warbler s, much 

 less like the chaffinch s, and is not suggestive of passion 

 or even emotion. We may ask of it the Wordsworthian 

 question : 



Or is it some more humble lay, 



Familiar matter of to-day ; 



Some simple sorrow, joy or pain 



That has been and will be again ? 



The clear, plaintive numbers flow at least as easily as 

 those of the Highland lass, but how surprisingly they 

 shake and agitate the whole body of the bird, as if he 

 were rising to the pitch of a great artist s ecstasy. 



The song of that date was another home bird s. Again 

 and again rang from the trees the broken ripple of the 

 nuthatch s monotone, loud and cheerful, though between 

 whiles he has another note, louder and less cheerful, that 

 approaches the shrillness of the great tit, who, with the 

 cock pheasant and the groan of the greenfinch in autumn, 

 has the distinction of uttering the one note that is defin 

 itely disagreeable. How often a group of us peered into 

 the budding trees that lovely spring day to catch sight 

 of the singer, and how often we failed ! The harvest of 

 our ears was always greater than the harvest of our eyes ; 

 but once the singer dived from a high beech to the 

 brushwood with a flash of blue where the sun touched 

 his back that might have been reflected from a king 

 fisher. 



