The sword-flags are rusting at their edges, and their sharp points are
turned. On the matted and entangled sedges lie the scattered leaves
which every rush of the October wind hurries from the boughs. Some fall
on the water and float slowly with the current, brown and yellow spots
on the dark surface. The grey willows bend to the breeze; soon the osier
beds will look reddish as the wands are stripped by the gusts. Alone the
thick polled alders remain green, and in their shadow the brook is still
darker. Through a poplar's thin branches the wind sounds as in the
rigging of a ship; for the rest, it is silence.

The thrushes have not forgotten the frost of the morning, and will not
sing at noon; the summer visitors have flown and the moorhens feed
quietly. The plantation by the brook is silent, for the sedges, though
they have drooped and become entangled, are not dry and sapless yet to
rustle loudly. They will rustle dry enough next spring, when the
sedge-birds come. A long withey-bed borders the brook and is more
resorted to by sedge-reedlings, or sedge-birds, as they are variously
called, than any place I know, even in the remotest country.

Generally it has been difficult to see them, because the withey is in
leaf when they come, and the leaves and sheaves of innumerable rods hide
them, while the ground beneath is covered by a thick growth of sedges
and flags, to which the birds descend. It happened once, however, that
the withey stoles had been polled, and in the spring the boughs were
short and small. At the same time, the easterly winds checked the
sedges, so that they were hardly half their height, and the flags were
thin, and not much taller, when the sedge-birds came, so that they for
once found but little cover, and could be seen to advantage.

There could not have been less than fifteen in the plantation, two