52 
NATURE NOTES 
from place to place, but do not intend leaving us for several 
weeks to come. The pretty chaffinch is arrayed in his nuptial 
dress. Since January his colours have waxed brighter and 
brighter, and he has now attained his full beauty. The cap of 
the little blue tit is bluer than ever, and his waistcoat of a 
brighter yellow than in mid-winter. The half-starved redwings, 
the stonechats, pied wagtails, and meadow pipits, which during 
the depth of winter frequented the sheep-folds, are now leaving 
them and returning to their favourite haunts. In the meadows 
the water rats are hurriedly crossing and recrossing the ditches, 
full of urgent business of some sort. 
On a mild still evening at this season it is pleasant to sit 
for a while on some stile or gate and listen to the newly- 
awakened voices of the spring. The glorious melody of the 
blackbird is heard but sparingly at present, but the thrushes 
are singing. Though their voices have not as yet acquired 
their full power, their music is prolonged till it is almost dark. 
Thrushes often suffer terribly until the worms move up to their 
summer levels. 
Gradually the sounds of human occupations grow less fre- 
quent. The shouting of men and boys, the barking of dogs, 
the noises of the chopping of wood, or of the creaking wheel 
of some cottage well, have almost ceased, and there is only a 
subdued rumbling of distant wheels, and a few answering barks 
of dogs, some perhaps miles away. Mellowed by distance such 
sounds have a drowsy, soothing influence. The partridges 
continue their challenging call long after dusk (at the full moon 
I have heard it at midnight). The loud startling cry of a water 
hen comes at intervals from the sedgy margin of a neighbouring 
ditch. :: A few peewits have arrived at their breeding ground, 
and their tremulous note, neither scream nor whistle, falls fitfully 
on the ear, as the birds wheel and tumble above the distant 
marshes. 
From the same direction there comes the piping of a snipe, 
like the syllables, “ tit but, tit but,” repeated many times in 
succession, the two sounds about equally accented. Another 
snipe is “drumming” overhead, and his curious goat-like bleat, 
as he dashes obliquely downwards, seems at one moment far 
off, and at the next close at hand, now high up in the air and 
now near the ground. 
The frogs are not yet in full chorus, but an occasional 
subdued croak arises from a shallow swampy pond close by, a 
solemn, deep-toned note, soothing as the cooing of turtle doves 
in leafy June. 
A little later there will be hundreds of these vocalists here, 
* The strange habit this bird has in early spring, of leaving its accustomed 
haunts and Hying abroad at night, passing over villages and roads and uttering 
now and then loud cries, has given rise to many conjectures as to the cause of 
these strange nocturnal voices in the air. They are not infrequently attributed to 
some kind of owl. 
