6o Summer Studies of Birds and Books chap. 



such steep wood in the chalk country has been 

 admirably described by the late Mr. Jefferies in 

 the Gamekeeper at Home. They are good for bird- 

 observers as well as for birds, for there is no position 

 so happy as one from which you can look down, un- 

 observed, through a vista of trees, without wearying 

 the eyes by a long, strained, upward search through 

 tangled foliage. Taking up your position at some 

 point where you can command as many trees as pos- 

 sible, leaving the upper and denser foliage for the 

 most part out of your thoughts, but keeping a keen 

 eye on all barer boughs or leafless twigs — for these 

 are specially affected by some birds, and others too 

 wUl come to them in the course of their wanderings, 

 — you may sit quietly down and wait, with binocular 

 ready, and ear as keenly observant as your eye would 

 be if it were watching your flies on the stream far 

 below. In such moments the sharp look-out you 

 have to keep will in no way hinder you from enjoy- 

 ing the beauty of the interlacing oak-branches, or the 

 gray tint which the lichen that everywhere clings to 

 them gives to the whole woodland scene. 



The ear will probably be the first watchman to 

 give the signal for a still closer attention. The 

 voices of the ubiquitous ChaSinch and Willow-wren 

 have not been enough to rouse it, for they are at 

 hand everywhere, both in Wales and England. But 

 now I hear the voice of a little bird that is not too 



