62 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



an intelligent, the other by an instinctive adaptation 

 to the law of the parallelogram of forces. But the 

 kestrels also took advantage of the upward tilt of the 

 wind which occurs in hilly country. Large birds save 

 themselves an exhausting expenditure of force by their 

 instinctive meteorological knowledge. Meadow-pipits were 

 abundant on the plateau, and I had many opportunities 

 of watching and hearing them sing, a necessary corre- 

 lation, for they leap from the ground and descend 

 upon expanded wings and tail (which is cocked) in a 

 slanting curve from forty or fifty feet in the air, the 

 notes running more and more rapidly together as the 

 bird nears the ground. It is not a champion's song, 

 but is beautiful in its suitability to the wide expanse 

 of earth and sky where the bird is at home and winds 

 are abroad, and in tone is itself like the wind among 

 seeded grasses. And this fitness to environment can 

 be pursued further. The delicate birds and the fragile 

 upland flowers were to the down what the traceried 

 carvings are to the cathedral pile and the lyrics to the 

 great substance of Shelley's Prometheus. 



In the spring before the visit I am relating I neither 

 heard nor saw a single bullfinch, but this year I could 

 leave the woodlarks and pipits of the open for the bull- 

 finches of the shades almost as assuredly as I could leave 

 the trefoils and rock-roses for the wood-anemones, as lovely 

 closed as open, for in dull weather they are like white 

 globes lit inwardly, so transparent are their fragile petals, 

 many of which are faintly dyed with a delicate pale 

 lilac, and a few — fairest of all — with sky-blue. I remem- 

 ber once that while walking among the woodlands, there 

 suddenly burst upon me the voices of all the outcasts 

 and gipsies among the birds — the growling caw of the 

 crow, the exhilarating shrieks of jays, the chattering 

 of pies and the distant chanting of wood-owls. Gradu- 

 ally they fell silent, and then in the quiescence of nature, 

 her indignation stilled, I heard a few feet away in the 

 hazels the low, intimate wind-music of the bullfinch. 

 The change of mood was extraordinarily dramatic, 

 but the soft plaintiveness of the notes preserved the 

 continuity of the experience and retained its significance, 

 while introducing a consoling variation upon it. 



