als. This year
there are plenty; I hear them in almost every walk I take. There is
one in the orchard beside the Red Lion Inn; another frequents the
hedges and trees behind St. Matthew's Church; up Claygate Lane there
is another--the third or fourth gateway on the left side is the
place to listen. One year a pair built, I am sure, close to the
cottage which stands by itself near the road on Tolworth Common. I
saw them daily perched on the trees in front, and heard them every
time I passed. There were not many, or we did not notice them, at
home, and therefore I have observed them with interest. Now there is
one every morning at the end of the garden. This nightingale, too,
that sings on Tolworth Common just opposite, returns there every
year, and, like the cuckoo to the copse, he is late in his
arrival--at least a week later than other nightingales whose haunts
are not far off. His cover is in some young birch-trees, which form
a leafy thicket among the furze. On the contrary, the brook-sparrow,
or sedge-reedling, that sings there is the first, I think, of all
his species to return in this place. He comes so soon that,
remembering the usual date in other districts, I have more than once
tried to persuade myself that I was mistaken, and that it was not
the sedge-bird, but some other. But he has a note that it is not
possible to confuse, and as it has happened several seasons running,
this early appearance, there can be no doubt it is a fixed period
with him. These two, the sedge-bird and the nightingale, have their
homes so near together that the one often sings in the branches
above, while the other chatters in the underwood beneath.

Besides these, before I get up I hear now a wren regularly. Little
as he is, his notes rise in a crescendo above all; he sings on a
small twig growing from the trunk of an oak--a bare twig which gives
him a view all round. There is a bold ring in some of the notes of
the wren which might give an idea to a composer desirous of
producing a merry tune. The chirp of sparrows, of course, underlies
all. I like sparrows. The chirp has a tang in it, a sound within a
sound, just as a piece of metal rings; there is not only the noise
of the blow as you strike it, but a sound of the metal itself. Just
now the cock birds are much together; a month or two since the
little bevies of sparrows were all hens, six or seven together, as
if there were a partial separation of the sexes at times. I like
sparr