BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
31 
sooner cast myself on the short grass in the shade 
than I noticed that the end of a projecting branch 
above my head, and about twenty feet from the 
ground, was the favourite perch of a tree pipit. 
He sang in the air, and, circling gracefully down, 
would alight on the branch, where, sitting near me 
and plainly visible, he would finish his song and 
renew it at intervals ; then, leaving the loved perch, 
he would drop singing to the ground, just a few 
yards beyond the tree's shadow; thence, singing 
again, he would mount up and up above the tree, 
only to slide down once more with set, unfluttering 
wings, with a beautiful swaying motion, to the 
same old resting-place on the branch, there to sing 
and sing and sing. 
If Melendez himself had come to me with flushed 
face and laughing eyes, and sat down on the grass 
at my side to recite one of his most enchanting 
poems, I should, with finger on lip, have enjoined 
silence ; for in the mood I was then in at that 
sequestered spot, with the landscape outside my 
shady green pavilion bathed and quivering in the 
brilliant sunshine, this small bird had suddenly 
become to me more than any other singer, feathered 
or human. And yet the tree pipit is not very 
highly regarded among British melodists on account 
of the little variety there is in its song. Never- 
theless it is most sweet — perhaps the sweetest of 
