BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 45 



early for heavy human creatures to be awake, and 

 were either ignorant of my presence or thought 

 proper to ignore it. 



But where, during the days when the vociferous 

 cuckoo, with hoarse chuckle and dissyllabic call and 

 wild bubbling cry, was so much with us — ^where, 

 in this period of many pleasant noises, was the 

 cuckoo's mate, or maid, or messenger, the quaint 

 ,and beautiful wrynecks' There are few British 

 birds, perhaps not one — ^not even the crafty black 

 and white magpie, or mysterious moth-like goat- 

 sucker, or tropical kingfisher — more interesting to 

 watch. At twilight I had lingered at the woodside, 

 also in other likely places, and the goatsucker had 

 failed to appear, gliding and zig-zagging hither and 

 thither on his dusky-mottled noiseless wings, and 

 now this still heavier disappointment was mine. 

 I could not find the wryneck. Those quiet grassy 

 orchards, shut in by straggling hedges, should have 

 had him as a favoured summer guest. Creeper and 

 nuthatch, and starling and gem-like blue tit, found 

 holes enough in the old trunks to breed in. And yet 

 I knew that, albeit not common, he was there ; 

 I could not exactly say where, but somewhere on 

 the other side of the next hedge or field or orchard ; 

 for I heard his unmistakable cry, now on this hand, 

 now on that. Day after day I followed the voice, 

 sometimes in my eagerness forcing my way through 



