190 Wild Life in a Southern County 



towards the end of summer there is occasionally a peculiar 

 snapping sound to be heard in the furze, as if some part of 

 the plant, perhaps the seed, were bursting. The shocks of 

 wheat, too, will crackle in the morning sun. This corner, 

 well sheltered by furze and brake, is one of ' sly Eeynard's ' 

 favourite haunts. The stems of the furze, when they grow 

 straight, are occasionally cut for walking-sticks. Wood- 

 pigeons visit the copse frequently — in the spring there are 

 several nests — and towards evening their hollow notes are 

 repeated at intervals. Though without the slightest pre- 

 tensions to a song, there is something soothing in their 

 call, pleasantly suggestive of woodland glades and deep 

 shady dells. 



Just before the shooting season opens there is a remark- 

 able absence of song from hedge and tree : even the chirp 

 of the house-sparrow is seldom heard on the roof, where 

 only recently it was loud and continuous. Most of the 

 sparrows have, in fact, left the houses in flocks and resorted 

 to the corn-fields after the grain. In this silent season the 

 robin, the wood-pigeon, and the greenfinch seem the only 

 birds whose notes are at all common : the pigeons call in 

 the evening as they come to the copse, the greenfinches in 

 a hushed kind of way talk to each other in the hedge, and 

 the robin plaintively utters a few notes on the tree. It is 

 not absolute silence indeed ; but the difference is very 

 noticeable. Through the ash poles on one side of the copse 

 distant glimpses may be obtained of gleaming water, where 

 a creek of the shallow lake runs in towards it. 



Bordering the furze, a thick hawthorn hedge — a double 

 mound — extends, so wide as to be itself almost another 

 copse. In the ' rowetty ' grass on the bank or in the hollow 

 places, under fallen leaves and trailing ivy, the hedgehog 

 hides during the day, so completely concealed that while 



