XATCRE NOTES 
ib2 
and tliitlier, and one settles, as if sunning itself, on a silver 
birch. Many butterflies flit round me, and a great beetle, 
with sonorous sound, booms majestically by. 
“ Chiff-chaff, ” “chiff-chaff” — yes, there is no mistaking that 
monotonous, hammered-out little note. It has lost its vernal 
vigour, but what of that ? Gladly I greet the humble song, 
which seems to tell me that the tiny warbler revels in this 
belated spell of summer, and rejoices in a departure deferred. 
With its pellucid surface flecked with fallen leaves from an 
overhanging beech, a little stream winds into sight, running its 
lazy course between deep banks. Beyond is dense wood, and 
from somewhere close by— from trees or water, I know not 
which — comes a complaining call. At last, through a break in 
the bracken which fringes the stream, something moves. Creep- 
ing cautiously up, I see a tiny moorhen swimming and calling 
querulously to its busy mother, who is foraging far ahead. 
There is a rustle in the bracken, and an adder glides stealthily 
away into denser cover, looking brilliant and wicked, with a ray 
of sunlight catching the black zigzag on its back. From the oak 
trees wood-wrens call — stragglers, perhaps, from the main 
army of migrants, retreating before the coming cold. 
On my right the forest breaks, and I come to a large grass 
field, in which a green woodpecker, looking strangely bright, is 
feeding. He thrusts his strong bill into the earth, and, after 
each probe, throws up his head to listen for alarms. He rises, 
comes straight towards me, with looping flight, alights on the 
trunk of a tall young oak, and, seeing me, with a wild yell takes 
flight into the denseness of the wood. Beyond the field a pair 
of kestrels hover, and a few yards away a magpie flies sneakingly 
along the hedge into an oak tree, chatters vigorously, then drops 
out of the tree and out of sight. 
Now again comes absolute stillness — with one accord, it 
seems, all sounds cease. Even the insects are silent for a 
moment, and not a leaf moves. Then a beech-nut falls crash- 
ing through the leaves, a robin sings a wistful snatch, a sound 
of bees is heard, tits and nuthatches begin their conversation 
anew, and a blackbird, with agitated “chink-chink,” flies low 
and in desperate haste through the oaks. 
On my way back, in an open space where purple heather 
stretches to a line of sombre firs, and where the heat-haze 
vibrates and the grasshopper’s note fills the air, I come upon 
a pair of dainty marsh-tits, dancing on fairy wings from thistle 
to thistle, stopping for a moment to explore each plant, then on 
again in airy, blithe, and never-ceasing quest of food. 
Now the path winds once more through a grove of oaks, and 
here and there along the way robins are singing. In these 
days of late summer, the robin’s song seems to be retrospective, 
reflective — “Alas! for the days that are no more”; and yet, 
through the sweetly mournful cadences, there rings, as it were, 
a note of hope, a note which, now that the other songsters are 
