ows, and am always glad to hear their chirp; the house seems
still and quiet after this nesting-time, when they leave us for the
wheatfields, where they stay the rest of the summer. What happy days
they have among the ripening corn!

But this year the thrushes do not sing: I have listened for them
morning after morning, but have not heard them. They used to sing so
continuously in the copse that their silence is very marked: I see
them, but they are silent--they want rain. Nor have our old
missel-thrushes sung here this spring. One season there seem more of
one kind of bird, and another of another species. None are more
constant than the turtle-dove: he always comes to the same place in
the copse, about forty yards from the garden gate.

The wood-pigeons are the most prominent birds in the copse this
year. In previous seasons there were hardly any--one or two,
perhaps; sometimes the note was not heard for weeks. There might
have been a nest; I do not think so; the pigeons that come seemed
merely to rest _en route_ elsewhere--occasional visitors only. But
last autumn (1880) a small flock of seven or eight took up their
residence here, and returned to roost every evening. They remained
the winter through, and even in the January frosts, if the sun shone
a little, called now and then. Their hollow cooing came from the
copse at midday on January 1, and it was heard again on the 2nd.
During the deep snows they were silent, but I constantly saw them
flying to and fro, and immediately it became milder they recommenced
to call. So that the wood-pigeon's notes have been heard in the
garden--and the house--with only short intervals ever since last
October, and it is now May. In the early spring, while walking up
the Long Ditton road towards sunset, the place from whence you can
get the most extended view of the copse, they were always flying
about the tops of the trees preparatory to roosting. The bare
slender tips of the birches on which they perched exposed them
against the sky. Once six alighted on a long birch-branch, bending
it down with their weight, not unlike a heavy load of fruit. As the
stormy sunset flamed up, tinting the fields with momentary red,
their hollow voices sounded among the trees.

Now, in May, they are busy; they have paired, and each couple has a
part of the copse to themselves. Just level with the gardens the
wood is almost bare of undergrowth; there is little to obstruct the
sight but the dead hangi