84 
NATURE NOTES 
On Gannaway Hill I saw that some enterprising hedge- 
sparrows had set up housekeeping. I called, but no one was 
at home : the house was not quite ready for habitation. I wish 
the happy couple all success. Willie R., it is true, goes home 
through the gate twenty yards below, but their house is mighty 
conspicuous: other folk than myself go up and down the hill, and 
I fear some will call with less honourable intentions at the home 
of these little pioneers. The larks were no longer in flocks, but 
high up, out of sight, I heard them singing their sacred lauds. 
In Gannaway Wood the wood pigeons were making their 
immoral suggestions. Do you know that here the call of the 
wood pigeon is interpreted “ Tak’ two coos (cows), Taffy; Tak’ 
two cows, Taffy” ?* Of course dear Sir Walter Scott says — 
“ In answer cooed the cushat dove 
Her notes of peace, and rest and love.” 
But if, instead of being on the road, we had gone through the 
wood, we should have found that the notes were notes of war, 
not of peace. Even “cushat doves” enjoy a “scrap,” and 
during their “ scraps ” they coo their loudest. 
Yellow-ammers had not separated, nor had the long-tailed 
tits — “feather-pokes” — broken up their family parties. But 
spring was in the air, and my “ little brothers and sisters,” as 
S. Francis of Assisi would have written, felt and knew this as 
well as I. 
Would I could finish this letter to you satisfactorily. In 
church I had under my eyes two ladies who sang, apparently 
with great devoutness, “ O all ye fowls of the air, bless ye the 
Lord : Praise Him, and magnify Him for ever.” The entire 
trimming of their hats was “ feathers.” The irony of it all ! 
This parish is exceptionally well off for birds, both for 
residents and for visitors, and also for travellers and passers by. 
I have seen more sea and water fowl here, in the middle of 
Warwickshire, than I did at my old home, which was less than 
twenty miles, as the crow flies, from the coast. Last October 
I saw two herring-gulls following the Stratford and Birmingham 
canal at Wooton \Vawen : poor birds, I hope they got over 
“ Brum ” safely. One poor gull in the hot weather of last 
summer seemed very “done up,” it was almost too exhausted 
to clear a high hazel hedge. In the late snowy weather a flock 
of geese flew over the top end of our football field during a 
match, and across the village at an altitude lower than that of 
some of the taller trees. Herons are very ordinary birds here ; 
there is a heronry at Ragley, and I believe at Warwick. I saw 
herons at Wooton Pools last October; but I don’t know if they 
nest there. I didn’t stay to look about me : I was trespassing, 
and a guilty conscience hurried me on. I had no excuse to offer. 
* [We heaifl the same interptelalion in the south-east of England more than 
forty years ago. — E d. N.N.I 
