the nuts are dropping, and the hedge berries turning red, and every one
finds something to his liking. There are the seeds of the charlock and
the thistle, and a hundred other little seeds, insects, and minute
atom-like foods it needs a bird's eye to know. They are never still, they
sweep up into the hedges and line the boughs, calling and talking, and
away again to another rood of stubble without any order or plan of
search, just sowing themselves about like wind-blown seeds. Up and down
the day through with a zest never failing. It is beautiful to listen to
them and watch them, if any one will stay under an oak by the nut-tree
boughs, here the dragon-flies shoot to and fro in the shade as if the
direct rays of the sun would burn their delicate wings; they hunt chiefly
in the shade. The linnets will suddenly sweep up into the boughs and
converse sweetly over your head. The sunshine lingers and grows sweeter
as the autumn gives tokens of its coming in the buff bryony leaf, and the
acorn filling its cup. They are so happy, the birds, yet there are few to
listen to them. I have often looked round and wondered that no one else
was about hearkening to them. Altogether, perhaps, they lead safer lives
in England than anywhere else. We do not shoot them; the fowlers do
mischief, still they make but little impression; there are few birds of
prey, and there is not that fearful bloodthirstiness that makes a
tropical forest so terrible in fact, under its outward show of glowing
colour. There, with cruel hawks and owls, and serpents, and beasts of
prey, a bird's life is one long terror. They are ever on the watch here,
but they are not so fearfully harassed, and are not certain as it were
beforehand to be torn to pieces. The land is well cultivated, and the
more the culture the more the food for them. Frost and snow are their
greatest enemies, but even these do not often last a great while. It is a
land of woods, and above all of hedges, which are much more favourable to
birds than forests, so that they are better off in England than in other
countries. From the sowing to the reaping, the wheat-field gives a