The Life of the Fields | Page 9

not cease; the note tittered 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 awhile; 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, is audible, and a
chiffchaff has twice passed. Afar beyond the oaks at the top of the field

dark specks ascend from time to time, and after moving in wide circles
for awhile descend again to the corn. These must be larks; but their
notes are not powerful enough to reach me, though they would were it
not for the song in the hedges, the hum of innumerable insects, and the
ceaseless "crake, crake" of landrails. There are at least two landrails in
the mowing-grass; one of them just now seemed coming straight
towards the apple tree, and I expected in a minute to see the grass move,
when the bird turned aside and entered the tufts and wild parsley by the
hedge. Thence the call has come without a moment's pause, "crake,
crake," till the thick hedge seems filled with it. Tits have visited the
apple tree over my head, a wren has sung in the willow, or rather on a
dead branch projecting lower down than the leafy boughs, and a robin
across under the elms in the opposite hedge. Elms are a favourite tree
of robins--not the upper branches, but those that grow down the trunk,
and are the first to have leaves in spring.
The yellowhammer is the most persistent individually, but I think the
blackbirds when listened to are the masters of the fields. Before one can
finish another begins, like the summer ripples succeeding behind each
other, so that the melodious sound merely changes its position. Now
here, now in the corner, then across the field, again in the distant copse,
where it seems about to sink, when it rises again almost at hand. Like a
great human artist, the blackbird makes no effort, being fully conscious
that his liquid tone cannot be matched. He utters a few delicious notes,
and carelessly quits the green stage of the oak till it pleases him to sing
again. Without the blackbird, in whose throat the sweetness of the
green fields dwells, the days would be only partly summer. Without the
violet all the bluebells and cowslips could not make a spring, and
without the blackbird. even the nightingale would be but half welcome.
It is not yet noon, these songs have been ceaseless since dawn; this
evening, after the yellowhammer has sung the sun down, when the
moon rises and the faint stars appear, still the cuckoo will call, and the
grasshopper lark, the landrail's "crake, crake" will echo from the mound,
a warbler or a blackcap will utter his notes, and even at the darkest of
the summer night the swallows will hardly sleep in their nests. As the
morning sky grows blue, an hour before the sun, up will rise the larks
singing and audible now, the cuckoo will recommence, and the
swallows will start again on their tireless journey. So that the songs of

the summer birds are as ceaseless as the sound of the waterfall which
plays day and night.
I cannot leave it; I must stay under the old tree in the midst of the long
grass, the luxury of the leaves, and the song in the very air. I seem as if
I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind
calls to being. The endless