starts for another willow stole, and as he flies begins to chatter when
halfway across, and finishes on a fresh branch.

But long before this another bird has commenced to sing in a bush
adjacent; a third takes it up in the thorn hedge; a fourth in the bushes
across the pond; and from farther down the stream comes a faint and
distant chatter. Ceaselessly the competing gossip goes on the entire day
and most of the night; indeed, sometimes all night through. On a warm
spring morning, when the sunshine pours upon the willows, and even the
white dust of the road is brighter, bringing out the shadows in clear
definition, their lively notes and quick motions make a pleasant
commentary on the low sound of the stream rolling round the curve.

A moorhen's call comes from the hatch. Broad yellow petals of
marsh-marigold stand up high among the sedges rising from the
greyish-green ground, which is covered with a film of sun-dried aquatic
grass left dry by the retiring waters. Here and there are lilac-tinted
cuckoo-flowers, drawn up on taller stalks than those that grow in the
meadows. The black flowers of the sedges are powdered with yellow
pollen; and dark green sword-flags are beginning to spread their fans.
But just across the road, on the topmost twigs of birch poles, swallows
twitter in the tenderest tones to their loves. From the oaks in the
meadows on that side titlarks mount above the highest bough and then
descend, sing, sing, singing, to the grass.

A jay calls in a circular copse in the midst of the meadow; solitary
rooks go over to their nests in the elms on the hill; cuckoos call, now
this way and now that, as they travel round. While leaning on the grey
and lichen-hung rails by the brook, the current glides by, and it is the
motion of the water and its low murmur which renders the place so idle;