A RIVER NIGHTINGALE 199 



any rate one bird sings ; and he is a sort of nightingale. 

 He certainly tries to be a nightingale. There is the same 

 alternation, though much less abrupt, between &quot; slur and 

 shake &quot; and the high call. If you think of the nightingale 

 while you listen, you find all manner of likenesses, as 

 you may if you think of the thrush while listening to the 

 lark. In one regard this sedge warbler excels the night 

 ingale, though he cannot reach like heights. He is the 

 most continuous of all singers, not excepting even the 

 swallow, and perhaps most listeners are a little disap 

 pointed with the nightingale for its capricious silences 

 and pauses, even though they allow that pause is the 

 secret of the higher rhythm. The closer you come to the 

 warbler and you may come, for all he cares, as close as 

 you please the more sweetly varied do his &quot;thick 

 chattered cheeps &quot; become. Indeed, as I listened the 

 description which I have long regarded as the poet s 

 best, seemed to me almost slanderous, so clear were the 

 higher notes, so merry the chuckle. And it is as great 

 an achievement for a bird to sing August in as to carol 

 &quot; out of winter s throat.&quot; 



The sedge warbler sang that noon on a baking 

 August day not out of the sedge (whose withering was 

 Keats s symbol of deathly silence) but from a grove of 

 reeds ten or twelve feet in height, such as the reed warbler 

 loves to choose for his pendulous nest. They are one 

 glory of the place ; the reeds that many people, to the 

 despair of formal botanists, usually call bulrushes. The 

 wind was just fresh enough to flutter the long leaves, so 

 to call them ; and the bird sang a whispered accompani 

 ment, to mechanical music perfectly fitted to his piece. 

 Sedge there is too, for as I stood on the edge of a blind 

 ditch alongside the river an unseen moorhen croaked 

 almost beneath my feet so suddenly and loudly that the 



