Pageant of Summer | Page 3

other little brown
birds that are known to be about. He got up into the willow from the
hedge parsley somehow, without being seen to climb or fly. Suddenly
he crosses to the tops of the hawthorn and immediately flings himself
up into the air a yard or two, his wings and ruffled crest making a
ragged outline; jerk, jerk, jerk, as if it were with the utmost difficulty he
could keep even at that height. He scolds, and twitters, and chirps, and
all at once sinks like a stone into the hedge and out of sight as a stone
into a pond. It is a whitethroat; his nest is deep in the parsley and
nettles. Presently he will go out to the island apple 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 redstart.
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 rabbits' feet and fur. A
crow rises lazily from the upper end of the field, and perches in the
chestnut. His presence, too, was unsuspected. He is there by far too
frequently. At this season the crows are always in the mowing-grass,
searching about, stalking in winding tracks from furrow to furrow,
picking up an egg here and a foolish fledgling that has wandered from
the mound yonder. Very likely there may be a moorhen or two slipping
about under cover of the long grass; thus hidden, they can leave the
shelter of the flags and wander a distance from the brook. So that
beneath the surface of the grass and under the screen of the leaves there
are ten times more birds than are seen.
Besides the singing and calling, there is a peculiar sound which is only
heard in summer. Waiting quietly to discover what birds are about, I
become aware of a sound in the very air. It is not the midsummer hum
which will soon be heard over the heated hay in the valley and over the
cooler hills alike. It is not enough to be called a hum, and does but just
tremble at the extreme edge of hearing. If the branches wave and rustle

they overbear it; the buzz of a passing bee is so much louder, it
overcomes all of it that is in the whole field. I cannot define it, except
by calling the hours of winter to mind--they are silent; you hear a
branch crack or creak as it rubs another in the wood, you hear the hoar
frost crunch on the grass beneath your feet, but the air is without sound
in itself. The sound of summer is everywhere--in the passing breeze, in
the hedge, in the broad-branching trees, in the grass as it swings; all the
myriad particles that together make the summer are in motion. The sap
moves in the trees, the pollen is pushed out from grass and flower, and
yet again these acres and acres of leaves and square miles of grass
blades--for they would cover acres and square miles if reckoned edge to