43 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



V 



Coming back from the waterside through the wood, 

 after the hottest hours of the day were over, the 

 crooning of the turtledoves would be heard again 

 on every side — that summer beech-wood lullaby 

 that seemed never to end. The other bird voices 

 were of the willow-wren, the wood-wren, the coal- 

 tit, and the now somewhat tiresome chiffchaff; 

 from the distance would come the prolonged rich 

 strain of the blackbird, and occasionally the lyric 

 of the chafiinch. The song of this bird gains greatly 

 when heard from a tall tree in the woodland silence ; 

 it has then a resonance and wildness which it appears 

 to lack in the garden and orchard. In the village I 

 had been glad to find that the chaffinch was not too 

 common, that in the tangle of minstrelsy one could 

 enjoy there his vigorous voice was not predominant. 

 Of all these woodland songsters the wood-wren 

 impressed me the most. He could always be heard, 

 no matter where I entered the wood, since all this 

 world of tall beeches was a favoured haunt of the 

 wood-wren, each pair keeping to its own territory 

 of half an acre of trees or so, and somewhere among 

 those trees the male was always singing, far up, 

 invisible to eyes beneath, in the topmost sunlit 



