rises, and an ancient pollard ash, hollow and black inside, guards an open gateway like a low tower.  The different tone of green shows that the hedge is there of nut-trees; but one great hawthorn spreads out in a semicircle, roofing the grass which is yet more verdant in the still pool (as it were) under it.  Next a corner, more oaks, and a chestnut in bloom.  Returning to this spot an old apple tree stands right out in the meadow like an island.  There seemed just now the tiniest twinkle of movement by the rushes, but it was lost among the hedge parsley.  Among the grey leaves of the willow there is another flit of motion; and visible now against the sky there is a little brown bird, not to be distinguished at the moment from the many other little brown birds that are known to be about.  He got up into the willow from the hedge parsley somehow, without being seen to climb or fly.  Suddenly he crosses to the tops of the hawthorn and immediately flings himself up into the air a yard or two, his wings and ruffled crest making a ragged outline; jerk, jerk, jerk, as if it were with the utmost difficulty he could keep even at that height.  He scolds, and twitters, and chirps, and all at once sinks like a stone into the hedge and out of sight as a stone into a pond.  It is a whitethroat; his nest is deep in the parsley and nettles.  Presently he will go out to the island apple tree and back again in a minute or two; the pair of them are so fond of each other’s affectionate company, they cannot remain apart.

Watching the line of the hedge, about every two minutes, either near at hand or yonder a bird darts out just at the level of the grass, hovers a second with labouring wings, and returns as swiftly to the cover.  Sometimes it is a flycatcher, sometimes a greenfinch, or chaffinch, now and then a robin, in one place a shrike, perhaps another is a redstart.  They are flyfishing all of them, seizing insects from the sorrel tips and grass, as the kingfisher takes a roach from the water.  A blackbird slips up into the oak and a dove descends in the corner by the chestnut tree.  But these are not visible together, only one at a time and with intervals.  The larger part of the life of the hedge is out of sight.  All the thrush-fledglings, the young blackbirds, and finches are hidden, most of them on the mound among the ivy, and parsley, and rough grasses, protected, too, by a roof of brambles.  The nests that still have eggs are not, like the nests of the early days of April, easily found; they are deep down in the tangled herbage by the shore of the ditch, or far inside the thorny thickets which then looked mere bushes, and are now so broad.  Landrails are running in the grass concealed as a man would be in a wood; they have nests and eggs on the ground for which you may search in vain till the mowers come.

Up in the corner a fragment of white fur and marks of scratching show where a doe has been preparing for a litter.  Some well-trodden runs lead from mound to mound; they are sandy near the hedge where the particles have been carried out adhering to the rabbits’ feet and fur.  A crow rises lazily from the upper end of the field, and perches in the chestnut.  His presence, too, was unsuspected.  He is there by far too frequently.  At this season the crows are always in the mowing-grass, searching about, stalking in winding tracks from furrow to furrow, picking up an egg here and a foolish fledgling that has wandered from the mound yonder.  Very likely there may be a moorhen or two slipping about under cover of the long grass; thus hidden, they can leave the shelter of the flags and wander a distance from the brook.  So that beneath the surface of the grass and under the screen of the leaves there are ten times more birds than are seen.

Besides the singing and calling, there is a peculiar sound which is only heard in summer.  Waiting quietly to discover what birds are about, I become aware of a sound in the very air.  It is not the midsummer hum which will soon be heard over the