Birds. 2139 



peaceful and lovelier scene the golden sunlight of summer eves hath never slept upon ; 

 a meeter spot for fairy revels the moon of a dewy June midnight never bathed with 

 her silver radiance. And here, upon the slope, about a stone's throw from the clump 

 aforesaid, and between it and the pool, surrounded at about the same distance by seve- 

 ral of the larger of the forest monarchs that grace the acclivity, stands a huge old 

 Spanish chesnut, of ample girth and wide-spread limbs, scarce inferior in size to the 

 largest of those of its mighty neighbours, with whom it has grown up, flourished and 

 decayed, through the long centuries of their silent companionship. The breeze of 

 five hundred autumns has scattered its leaves, the lightnings have riven its largest 

 limbs, the decay of antiquity has set its seal upon his knobbed and gnarled sides, and 

 " ruin greenly dwells " about the vast white truncated arms that tower forth from 

 among the belt of fair foliage which the lower boughs continue yearly to put forth. 

 There it stands, still " holding dark communion with the cloud," — a mighty wreck — 

 a fallen majesty. The storms of a few more winters will pass over it, and then its 

 place shall know it no more ; no monument shall mark the spot where for ages stood 

 the mighty tree ; no epitaph shall chronicle the lustre of its leafy pride ! It is pleasant 

 on summer evenings to watch the stealthily sportive rabbits — white ones many of them 

 — playing round the old fantastic roots that buttress up his broad old trunk, and pop- 

 ping in and out of their lurking-places beneath them ; or to sit at early morning or 

 broad noon in the shade of the neighbouring clump, and mark the various denizens 

 of the old tree's boughs engaged in their nidifying avocations. We shall see there, at 

 the proper season, the jackdaw, the starling, the barn owl, or his cousin the wood owl, 

 the cushat,* and perhaps the mountain sparrow, all busy in providing for the " gaping 

 wide-mouthed " families that await, in all the expectancy of their callow helplessness, 

 each return of their parent, in some one or other of its numerous holes and crannies. 

 The green woodpeckers, too, have bored their circular cavities in different parts of its 

 bare sapless limbs, but they do not breed there now ; and this summer (1847), strange 

 to tell, a pair of kestrels built and hatched their young in the hollow of one of the 

 larger decayed boughs ! I know not whether the same pair that were wont to build at 

 the top of the lofty larch hard by, but this year there was no nest in the larch tree. 

 The clear ringing of the pretty falcon's musical spring note, from the old wood, had 

 often made me pause to listen, — for I love the kestrel and her woodland cry ; but I 

 little suspected the whereabout of her nest (for I knew not then that this bird was ever 

 foraminous in its nesting), until I had twice seen her fly off from the same dead bough 

 that I have mentioned. This induced a scrutiny, and I presently discovered the hole 

 in which, as it afterwards proved, the nest was placed, and which was of roomy dimen- 

 sions, and about a foot or so deep. Day by day after this I noted from a distance the 

 movements of my pretty little spotted friend, who had there hatched, and who was not 

 much in the habit of quitting her woolly chicks, unless disturbed : when she did so, 

 her extreme caution on her return was amusing. She would fly round and round the 

 tree, hovering at intervals with wide spread tail, to make quite sure that no enemy was 

 at hand, and then— with a parting survey at the entrance — pop into her domicile. 

 None of her fellow denizens of the boughs showed any sort of fear or anxiety at the 



* This species, as well as the stockdove, breeds in holes of trees. I have taken 

 the eggs and young frequently from such situations, and its laying in holes of the tree 

 in question is literally a fact. 



