alone, the orchard has acquired an atmosphere of peace and
stillness, such as grows up in woods and far-away lonely places. It is
so commonplace and unpretentious that passers-by do not notice it; it is
merely a corner of meadow dotted with apple trees--a place that needs
frequent glances and a dreamy mood to understand it as the birds
understand it. They are always there. In spring, thrushes move along,
rustling the fallen leaves as they search among the arum sheaths
unrolling beside the sheltering palings. There are nooks and corners
whence shy creatures can steal out from the shadow and be happy. There
is a loving streak of sunshine somewhere among the tree trunks.

Though the copse is so much frequented the migrant birds (which have now
for the most part gone) next spring will not be seen nor heard there
first. With one exception, it is not the first place to find them. The
cuckoos which come to the copse do not call till some time after others
have been heard in the neighbourhood. There is another favourite copse a
mile distant, and the cuckoo can be heard near it quite a week earlier.
This last spring there were two days' difference--a marked interval.

The nightingale that sings in the bushes on the common immediately
opposite the copse is late in the same manner. There is a mound about
half a mile farther, where a nightingale always sings first, before all
the others of the district. The one on the common began to sing last
spring a full week later. On the contrary, the sedge-reedling, which
chatters side by side with the nightingale, is the first of all his kind
to return to the neighbourhood. The same thing happens season after
season, so that when once you know these places you can always hear the
birds several days before other people.

With flowers it is the same; the lesser celandine, the marsh marigold,
the silvery cardamine, appear first in one particular spot, and may be
gathered there before a petal has opened elsewhere. The first swallow in
this district generally appears round about a pond near some farm
buildings. Birds care nothing for appropriate surroundings. Hearing a
titlark singing his loudest, I found him perched on the rim of a tub
placed for horses to drink from.

This very pond by which the first swallow appears is muddy enough, and
surrounded with poached mud, for a herd of cattle drink from and stand
in it. An elm overhangs it, and on the lower branches, which are dead,
the swallows p