WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
spring twilight in sleep. The rain settled into 
the satisfied earth with gentle noises like a soft 
monologue, and there was a creditable veil of 
foliage over the hedge. In the elm-tree, 
Smol the Throstle, a throbbing silhouette, 
whistled and chirruped in broken mellow 
phrases, and his kind answered him from 
Coolnabrock. Shacaim crouched down on his 
perch and eyed the singer intently. More rats 
came out and ran about the bank, but he did 
not notice them. The throstle sang about the 
rain in short sweet notes that were themselves 
like the dripping of water of the swelling of 
waterfalls, and of the circuit of the sap in the 
hazel-trees. Shacaim heard it all. Then 
Londub the Blackbird took up the motif, and 
in accents deeper and more mellow, repeated 
the old wordless paean of the equinox, when 
the things of the elder years come together to 
bring forth life for the new. And with the 
blackbird's music, the life of the old things 
that was the redwing stirred, as it had already 
stirred in the leaves and the grass at the drip 
of the rain, and he knew that the breaking of 
buds and song, accompanying one another, and 
that after the songtime, comes the not less 
sweet silence of the woods when fledglings fill 
the nest. Shacaim heard it all. He drew 
himself up with puffed throat to honour 
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