BIRD LIFE IN JUNE. 149 
corncrake and the occasional hoot of owl or squeak of bat, or 
even the sleepy note of a wakeful cuckoo. 
Young blackcaps have flown, and chaffinches have hatched a 
second brood, when the spotted fly-catcher is only thinking about 
his first. Short as the time is since his arrival he seems to have 
been here always, so familiar is the slender grey figure perched so 
upright and alert upon the tennis net or some post or dead branch, 
anywhere where he can have an uninterrupted view around him, 
and a clear space in which to make those delicious dancing, 
darting flights by which he captures his airy prey. A very 
favourite bird of mine is the swift with his bold splendid flight 
and curious, though not unmusical, scream. In the nearest 
town just before a thunder storm I saw him to advantage, 
darting along on a level with the house-tops, chasing his 
companions and being chased in turn, screaming with delight, 
as it seemed, at the prospect of rain. A bird of the storm he 
always seems to me, who have watched him hundreds of times, 
when the air was most breathless and the heat most oppressive, 
almost a speck against the blackness of the thunder clouds, 
balancing himself, motionless, as it appeared, high above the 
earth, the familiar spirit of the thunder and the wind. 
There is much to be been in a garden in every month of the 
year, but to me May and June are the two which are above all 
others. In them are combined all the delights of life — sweet 
smells and sounds and the hundred-and-one lovely pictures which 
a plentiful bird life can afford the inhabitants of England. 
Margaret L. Anderson. 
Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. 
EPPING FOREST AT NIGHT. 
HOUGH the Forest, now that the Corporation has 
taken it over and appointed rangers, no longer enjoys 
the reputation of being an Alsatia after dark, still in 
the summer months a certain number of tramps turn 
gipsy and make for themselves an hotel a la belle etoile within 
the thick clumps of brambles. Hence the wayfarer who 
prefers his own company to theirs would do well to select for his 
nocturnal perambulation one of the warm, dry, moonlight nights 
in April, before these folk are abroad. At that time the only 
persons likely to interfere with his researches are the rangers, 
but those well-attired gamekeepers think, quite rightly, that 
vigilance in April is unnecessary. On the other hand there are 
some human voices to be heard which are innocuous and even 
comfortable to the ear. From one o’clock till four the dim out- 
lines of hay-carts and straw-carts slowly take their creaking 
way down the high road in the direction of Whitechapel market. 
The driver, usually asleep on the summit of his load like a 
