EPPLVG FOREST AT NIGHT. 
•51 
the cold morning wind blows, drenching the grass with dew, 
and great Pan awakes. The blackbirds take up the challenge 
of the thrushes, and by sheer force of numbers sing their 
cronies down. From Copped Hall Park comes the cough of 
the pheasant, which acts like a milkman’s jodel upon the ring- 
dove and the sleepy robin, the latter essentially a cold-weather 
bird, who opens the concert in winter but in summer proves 
the laggard ; and these two add their quotas to the olla podrida 
of melody. The wood beyond the road-margin is already 
brimming over with natural music, and now it receives further 
additions in the sweet succulent hotch-potch of the redstart 
and the tree-pipit’s unassuming treble. It seems rather extra- 
ordinary that these delicate summer migrants should have 
the spirit to sing in the very coldest part of the whole twenty- 
four hours ; but the pipit, at any rate, is on the verge of being 
acclimatised, or would appear to be, as he sometimes spends the 
winter on our hills, in which case he may be seen any sunny day 
in February soaring, diving and singing to his mate. The next 
to break silence is the family of tits, the little blue variety 
waiting as usual till his big brother has finished the cantering 
song and subsided into the customary sea-saw. 
Passing by several other songsters of less interest we enter 
Monk’s Wood, where just before sunrise the missel-thrush 
utters a few ringing notes — only a few, because his unique 
season for music, which lasts only from November or December 
to May, is nearly over, and his gaiety is limited in consequence. 
Hard by on the trunk of one of the oldest beeches the green 
woodpecker utters his first maniacal laugh, when he looks round 
the trunk and sees the sun rising ; the sycophant starlings 
squeaking idly on a bough take their cue from him and begin 
to bubble and squeak. And now that the air is becoming 
warmer the rest of the summer migrants express their satis- 
faction in fluid language ; the chiff-chaffs first, and after them 
the morning nightingales, which are probably not the same 
as the singers of the night, both on a priori grounds and also 
because they are not heard in the particular spots that rang 
with the moonlight serenades ; and the song is inferior in 
timbre, there is a rift in the lute somewhere ; perhaps they 
are younger birds that have not fully acquired the habits of 
their species. Still they put their conscience into the song, 
until the whole body throbs with every note, and when the 
impudent willow-wren perches on a higher branch of the same 
oak and repeats his delicately-finished melody, it is merely the 
attempt of an Offenbach to match the merry tunes of “ La Fille 
de Madame Angot ” against the music of “ Tannhauser.” In 
the density of the thickets that border Chingford Green the 
nervous white-throats are beginning to fidget, and last of all 
their neighbour, the black-cap, whose headgear is not so black 
as it is painted, opens his eyes and runs up and down the scales 
■of his flagelet in a melodious rigmarole. 
W. A. Fox. 
