but blink at the clamour of such a host of cunning sentinels and,
pretending that he had come out only to take the air, return
majestically to his dinner of leavings in the kitchen. In May and
June, however, one does not wish the birds to be frightened. One would
like one's garden to be an Alsatia for all their wings and all their
songs. There is no hope of this in a garden full of cats. Even a
Tetrazzini would cease to be able to produce her best trills if every
time she opened her mouth, a tiger padded in her direction down a path
of currant bushes. There are, it may be admitted, heroic exceptions.
The chaffinch sits in the plum and blusters out his music, cat or no
cat. To be sure, he only sings, a flush of all the colours, in order
to distract our attention. He is not an artist but a watchman. If you
look into the buddleia-tree beside him, you will see his hen moving
about in silence, creeping, dancing, fluttering, as she gorges herself
with insects. She is a fly-catcher at this season, leaping into the
air and pirouetting as she seizes her prey and returns to the bough.
She is restless and is not content with the spoil of a single tree.
She flings herself gracefully, like a ballet-dancer, into the plum,
and takes up a caterpillar in her beak. She does not eat it at once,
but stands still, eyeing you as though awaiting your applause. Her
husband, sitting on the topmost spray, goes on singing his version of
_The Roast Beef of Old England_. She does not even now eat the
caterpillar, but hurries along the paths of the branches with the
obvious purpose of finding a tasty insect to eat long with it. It may
be that there are insects that play the part of mustard or
Worcestershire sauce in the chaffinch world. What a meal she is making
in any case before she hurries back to her nest! It seems that among
the chaffinches the male is the more spiritual of the sexes. But then
he has so little to do compared with the female. He is still in that
state of savagery in which the male dresses finely and idles.