DRAGON’S BLOOD 237 
made the faint green tracery of the opening leaves 
all show in a mist of soft moonlight. As I reached 
the centre of the lake, from both shores a veery 
chorus began. The hermit thrush will not sing after 
eight, but the veery sings well into the dark, if only 
the moon will shine. That night, as from the hidden 
springs of the lake the heart-blood of the hills pulsed 
against my tired body, the veery songs drifted across 
the water, all woven with moonshine and fragrance, 
until it seemed as if the moonlight and the perfume, 
the coolness and the song were all one. 
Some April evening between cherry-blow and 
apple-blossom the wood thrush comes back. I first 
hear his organ-notes from the beech tree at the foot 
of Violet Hill. Down from my house beside the 
white oak I make haste to meet him. In 1918, he 
came to me on May 83; in 1917 on April 27; and in 
1916 on April 30. He seems always glad to see me, 
yet with certain reserves and withdrawings quite 
different from the robins, who chirp unrestrainedly 
at one’s very feet. His well-fitting coat of wood- 
brown and soft white, dusked and dotted with black, 
accord with the natural dignity of the bird. It is 
quite impossible to be reserved in a red waistcoat. 
Some of my earliest and happiest bird-memories are 
of this sweet singer. 
The wood thrush has a habit of marking his nest 
with some patch or shred of white, perhaps so that 
when he comes back from his twilight song he may 
find it the more readily. Usually the mark is a bit 
of paper, or a scrap of cloth, on which the nest is 
