96 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



pinched confusion of outline at once destroys the large 

 rhythm and repose of the fields, and I do not think 

 it fanciful to see in their ugliness a wrong and brusque 

 method of relationship with the earth, a kind of un- 

 graciousness with it, in which the poverty of appearance 

 naturally and in the long run corresponds with that of 

 material results. It is wonderful what a lot of practical 

 work real beauty manages to do. 



Except for the gulls, who seem to come up the 

 river earlier every year,^ there is very little bird-life 

 along the river until the winter. The land is the 

 enclusive stage for exits and entrances, and the wood- 

 pigeon, who leaves us in September (sometimes in 

 large flocks for the country, death and richer food, 

 the survivors trickling back to safety in December and 

 January like a routed army), gives the signal for 

 the procession to begin. I once saw a detachment 

 in early October thus migrating in a high wind, and 

 as they wheeled, taking a comer of the gale, they 

 threw up their wings into a beautiful arch in the 

 manner of redshank and ringed plover. Then I saw 

 no more of the ring-dove until the end of the first 

 week in December. 



The land now begins to serve as a collecting station 

 for autumn flocks, like a miscellany of poems. Some 

 days after the wood-pigeons had gone I blundered 

 (on a day of yellow fog) into a migration of black- 

 birds. They had stopped to rest in the may and 

 elderberry hedged orchard on my (the Surrey) side 

 of the river, and I saw as many as thirty of them 

 in the gloom, while the clogged air vibrated with 

 metallic detonations from at least thirty more black 

 knights-errant hidden among the trees. Next day 

 two-thirds of them had vanished, and gradually the 

 party thinned away into the unknown, until in 

 another week only the original residents — half a dozen 

 or so in number — ^who remain with us until the 

 nesting season (most of them being eaten by the 

 " rakehelly rabblement " of cats) were left. Yet with 



1 The earliest I have seen them (a pair) was on August 4th 

 — ^perhaps a pair that failed to rear a family. 



