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The Chrysalis Year 122 XVII. A Summer Stroll 129 XVIII. A Moorland Fire 138 XIX. The Arcadian Donkey 145 XX. A Life-and-Death Struggle 153 XXI. The Shrike’s Larder 160 XXII. Nests and No Nests 167 XXIII. The Crouch Oak 176 XXIV. A Spotted Orchis 183 XXV. The Root of the Matter 192 XXVI. The Devil’s Punchbowl 199 XXVII. The Lark in Autumn 207 XXVIII. The Squirrel’s Harvest 215 XXIX. A Drained Fishpond 223 XXX. An Interview with a Cock-sparrow 230 XXXI. The Green Woodpecker 237 XXXII. The Harebell 244 XXXIII. The Untamable Shrew 251

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Moorland Idylls

We sat late on the verandah last night, listening to the low trilling croon of the night-jar. It was a balmy evening, one of the few this summer; the sunset was lingering over the heather-clad moors, and the lonely bird sat perched on one bough of the wind-swept pine-tree by Martin’s Corner, calling pathetically to his mate with that deep passionate cry of his. I know not why, but the voice of the night-jar seems to me fuller of unspoken poetry than that of any more musical and articulate songster. Away down in the valley a nightingale was pouring his full throat among the oak-brush; but we hardly heeded him. Up on the open moorland, in the twilight solitude, that grey bird of dusk sat keening and sobbing his monotonous love-plaint; and it moved us more than all the nightingale’s gamut. I think it must be because we feel instinctively he is in terrible earnest. Those profound catches in the throat are the very note of true love; they have in them something of high human passion. And we could see the bird himself, too, on his half-leafless perch, craning his neck as he crooned, and looking eagerly for his lady-love. It was a delicious moment. We murmured as we sat George Meredith’s lines—

We were fortunate indeed in our mise-en-scène; for the poet’s picture had realized itself before us. And, as usual, art had reacted upon nature. The cry, that was so beautiful and romantic in itself, gained an added touch of beauty and romance from the great word-painter’s exquisite images.

Perhaps, too, some part of the charm in the night-jar and his kind may be due to the sense that here at least we stand face to face with a genuine relic of the older, the wilder, and the freer England. He is a bird of the night, of the heather and the bracken, of the unbroken waste, of the