tree and back again in a minute or two; the pair of them are so
fond of each other's affectionate company, they cannot remain
apart.

Watching the line of the hedge, about every two minutes, either
near at hand or yonder a bird darts out just at the level of the
grass, hovers a second with labouring wings, and returns as swiftly
to the cover. Sometimes it is a flycatcher, sometimes a
greenfinch, or chaffinch, now and then a robin, in one place a
shrike, perhaps another is a red-start. They are flyfishing all of
them, seizing insects from the sorrel tips and grass, as the
kingfisher takes a roach from the water. A blackbird slips up into
the oak and a dove descends in the corner by the chestnut tree.
But these are not visible together, only one at a time and with
intervals. The larger part of the life of the hedge is out of
sight. All the thrush-fledglings, the young blackbirds, and
finches are hidden, most of them on the mound among the ivy, and
parsley, and rough grasses, protected, too, by a roof of brambles.
The nests that still have eggs are not, like the nests of the early
days of April, easily found; they are deep down in the tangled
herbage by the shore of the ditch, or far inside the thorny
thickets which then looked mere bushes, and are now so broad.
Landrails are running in the grass concealed as a man would be in a
wood; they have nests and eggs on the ground for which you may
search in vain till the mowers come.

Up in the corner a fragment of white fur and marks of scratching
show where a doe has been preparing for a litter. Some well-
trodden runs lead from mound to mound; they are sandy near the
hedge where the particles have been carried out adhering to the