ll chirp--a note like a sparrow's--just in
front, and only recede a yard at a time as you push through the tall
grass, flags, and underwood. Stand where you can see the brook, not
too near, but so as to see it through a fringe of sedges and
willows. The pink lychnis or ragged robin grows among the grasses;
the iris flowers higher on the shore. The water-vole comes swimming
past, on his way to nibble the green weeds in the stream round about
the great branch which fell two winters since, and remains in the
water. Aquatic plants take root in its shelter. There, too, a
moorhen goes, sometimes diving under the bough. A blackbird flies up
to drink or bathe, never at the grassy edge, but always choosing a
spot where he can get at the stream free from obstruction. The sound
of many birds singing comes from the hedge across the meadow; it
mingles with the rush of the water through a drawn hatch--finches
and linnets, thrush and chiff-chaff, wren and whitethroat, and
others farther away, whose louder notes only reach. The singing is
so mixed and interwoven, and is made of so many notes, it seems as
if it were the leaves singing--the countless leaves--as if they had
voices.

A brightly-coloured bird, the redstart, appears suddenly in spring,
like a flower that has bloomed before the bud was noticed. Red is
his chief colour, and as he rushes out from his perch to take an
insect on the wing, he looks like a red streak. These birds
sometimes nest near farm-houses in the rickyards, sometimes by
copses, and sometimes in the deepest and most secluded combes or
glens, the farthest places from habitation; so that they cannot be
said to have any preference, as so many birds have, for a particular
kind of locality; but they return year by year to the places they
have chosen. The return of the corncrake or landrail is quickly
recognized by the noise he makes in the grass; he is the noisiest of
all the spring-birds. The return of the goat-sucker is hardly
noticed at first. This is not at all a rare, but rather a local
bird, well known in many places, but in others unnoticed, except by
those who feel a special interest. A bird must be common and
plentiful before people generally observe it, so that there are many
of the labouring class who have never seen the goat-sucker, or would
say so, if you asked them.

Few observe the migration of the turtle-doves, perhaps confusing
them with the wood-pigeons, which stay in the fields all the winter.