148 
NATURE NOTES 
rosy village children, with unmissed flowers in their hands, bob 
their sudden curtsies or nod their rustic bows. On Sundays the 
auld Laird hears the best little scholars say their hymns and 
psalms, well pleased indeed to be dismissed from him with a brief 
word of commendation. Here in the fields and woods about this 
old-world spot, spring — nearly of age, but not quite summer yet — 
is almost at its height. The gorse is a glow of gold perfumed, the 
wood-hyacinths seas of deep blue and starred here and there 
with primroses : neither are these latter yet over. In the hedge 
banks the red campion, wild vetch, wild carrot, germander 
speedwell, water-avens, blue bugloss, crowfoot and wild straw- 
berry, peep or brag in the long grasses, cocksfoot rye and 
anthered sweet vernal and timothy. On the close roadside turf of 
the moors, blossom lousewort, loosestrife, yellow Potentilla, and 
milkwort blue and white and pink. In the damp the violet-headed 
butterwort springs from its star of flat leaves, and the orchids, 
purple and white, are rearing their showy spikes. There are sea 
pinks on the spray-splashed lichened rocks, and sea campion and 
silver-weed in the loose white sands. 
On the moors the grey hen’s brood is running, the parents 
betraying their whereabouts in their very anxiety to mislead. 
The curlew’s haunting cry and the plover’s peevish complaint 
enliven the moors. In the lower pastures the crouching corn- 
crake runs like a rat in the gleaming ryegrass. The noisy, 
brilliant-plumaged oyster-catcher, sentinel later to the ducks 
in the shooting season, the gorgeous sheldrake, many mal- 
lards who fly seaward when disturbed and whose mates build 
in the brown bog-myrtle thickets, sandpipers, and an occa- 
sional cormorant, haunt the coast. Regularly at meal times 
the gulls in their pure greys assemble about the house— these 
and the chattering jackdaws, starlings, thrushes and black- 
birds are nearly all day running, hopping and feeding about 
the short sea turf. Out at sea the splendid solan goose, in great 
sweeps or flapping heavily, hunts the long sea pastures : the 
black and white of their wings shows plain at a great distance, 
and when they drop like plummets into the sea the foam splashes 
up white. In the tall larches near at hand the herons are very 
quiet now : only their young clamour and hiss in the huge untidy 
nests. Among the smaller, less common birds I noticed white- 
throats, redpoles, willow warblers, black-headed buntings and 
yellow wagtails. Unnibbled and untrod the tall wood grasses 
are shooting up : the tender green of the fresh pine and spruce, 
the oak, blossom-coloured in its early reds and yellows, the 
tardy ash, the green of larch and birch and sycamore, tell of the 
coming summer. All day the ferns uncurl their circinate fronds. 
Full spring has come again — not far different from last year 
indeed, or much unlike the seasons to come, yet full of promised 
good and with pleasant reminiscences of the past. Maybe it is 
because we have seen all these things before that it delights us 
to see them again. Perhaps, as children love to hear the old 
