by me all the while. A bullfinch pipes now and then further up the
hedge where the brambles and thorns are thickest. Boldest of birds
to look at, he is always in hiding. The shrill tone of a goldfinch
came just now from the ash branches, but he has gone on. Every
four or five minutes a chaffinch sings close by, and another fills
the interval near the gateway. There are linnets somewhere, but I
cannot from the old apple tree fix their exact place. Thrushes
have sung and ceased; they will begin again in ten minutes. The
blackbirds do not cease; the note uttered by a blackbird in the oak
yonder before it can drop is taken up by a second near the top of
the field, and ere it falls is caught by a third on the left-hand
side. From one of the topmost boughs of an elm there fell the song
of a willow warbler for a while; one of the least of birds, he
often seeks the highest branches of the highest tree.

A yellowhammer has just flown from a bare branch in the gateway,
where he has been perched and singing a full hour. Presently he
will commence again, and as the sun declines will sing him to the
horizon, and then again sing till nearly dusk. The yellowhammer is
almost the longest of all the singers; he sits and sits and has no
inclination to move. In the spring he sings, in the summer he
sings, and he continues when the last sheaves are being carried
from the wheat field. The redstart yonder has given forth a few
notes, the whitethroat flings himself into the air at short
intervals and chatters, the shrike calls sharp and determined,
faint but shrill calls descend from the swifts in the air. These
descend, but the twittering notes of the swallows do not reach so
far - they are too high to-day. A cuckoo has called by the brook,
and now fainter from a greater distance. That the titlarks are
singing I know, but not within hearing from here; a dove, though,