AN EAST ANGLIAN ‘^HANGER 
29 
breathes the south wind. If it were not for the red drift of beech 
leaves and the spotted yellow Hakes from the sycamores, one 
might well imagine that spring were near, for now that the elm 
branches are almost bare the fretted edges of the twigs can be 
discerned, where the young buds are appearing. The hazel and 
alder catkins, too, have formed, though they will not lengthen 
until February. A glance at the undergrowth of the Hanger, 
however, reveals bright clusters of hawthorn berries and scarlet 
hips of the wild roses, while here and there the bushes are 
festooned with red-fruited bines of bryony. 
.\t all times of the year it is pleasant to wander along the 
footpath by the Hanger. When the hot sun rays scorch the 
roadside hedges and open heathlands, there is cool shade to be 
found beneath the overhanging trees, and when the keen north 
winds sweep over field and fen there is shelter there from the 
biting blast. On this sunny late autumn day we recall earlier 
rambles that led us this way and revealed to us the Hanger clad 
in the full glory of its summer verdure. To climb the steep 
wooded slope was then to find oneself amid a dense undergrowth 
of fresh green bracken, not, however, without its open spaces 
where the wild flowers flourished and made the air fragrant. 
The scent of sunny banks of wild thyme tempted one to linger 
in these miniature glades until the desire to gather a bunch of 
late blooming bluebells and purple orchids made us venture again 
into the shadow of the chestnuts and birches. Those birches 
were then among the most beautiful things in the world for us : 
with the delicate tracery of their slender branches half hidden 
by the dainty leaves, they looked like large maidenhair ferns held 
up on silvery stems against the sky’s bright summer blue. Over- 
head among the tree tops the wood- pigeons kept up a continual 
wing-clatter which, while it sometimes seemed to startle the 
blackbirds from the bramble bushes, did not disturb the squirrels 
that frisked among the boughs. 
A pair of kestrels built amid the dusky foliage of one of the 
storm-rent firs, and the male bird was often seen hovering over 
the water-meadows that stretched away from the foot of the 
Hanger. A night-jar, too, had its home somewhere on that 
shady slope, and its “churring” was one of the most familiar 
sounds to those who passed that way at night. Yet there were 
many people who could not tell you what kind of bird it was 
that broke the silence of the night with such a strange note, and 
a townsman who stopped to listen to it was heard to say that it 
must be some “ foreign bird.” Yet the Hanger has long been 
the haunt of the “churn-owls,” and almost any summer evening, 
in the twilight, they may be seen moth-hawking along the border 
of the water-meadows. The real owls used to frequent the slope, 
and trees are pointed out in which they are known to have lived ; 
but a mistaken activity on the part of local game-keepers has 
destroyed them all or driven them away. Yet one would have 
thought that the wooded retreat of the Hanger might have been 
