A VERY RARE BIRD.
Brown lives next door but one to me. His speciality is birds, and he must be a frightful nuisance to them. I shouldn't care to be a bird if Brown knew where my nest was. It isn't that he takes their eggs. If he would merely rob them and go away it wouldn't matter so much. They could always begin again after a decent interval. But a naturalist of the modern school doesn't want a bird's eggs; he wants to watch her sitting on them. Now sitting is a business that demands concentration, a strong effort of the will and an undistracted mind. How on earth is a bird to concentrate when she knows perfectly well that Brown, disguised as a tree or a sheep or a haycock, is watching her day after day for hours at a stretch and snap-shotting her every five minutes or so for some confounded magazine? In nine cases out of ten she lets her thoughts wander and ends half unconsciously by posing, with the result that most of her eggs don't hatch out.
Brown has a highly-trained sense of hearing. You and I, of course, possess pretty good ears for ordinary purposes. We can catch as soon as anyone else that muffled midnight hum, as of a distant threshing-machine beneath a blanket, which advertises the approach of the roaming Zepp. From constant practice, too, we have learnt, sitting in our drawing room or study, to distinguish the crash of the overturned nursery table upstairs from the duller, less resonant thud of baby's head as it strikes the floor. But can we positively state from the note of the blackbird at the bottom of the garden whether it has three, four or five eggs in its nest, or indeed if it is a house-holder at all? No, we cannot; but Brown can.
Even specialists, however, occasionally make mistakes. A day or two ago, just as dusk was falling, Brown entered my house in a state of considerable excitement and informed me that a pair of reed-warblers were building in my orchard.
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Quite," he replied. "I have not actually seen the birds yet, but I have heard them from my own garden, and of course the note of the nesting reed-warbler is unmistakable."
"Of course," I agreed.
"It is a most extraordinary occurrence," he continued, "most extraordinary."
"You mean because there are no reeds there?"
"Exactly."
I was quite certain in my own mind that there were no reed-warblers either, but I felt it would be impertinent for a layman like myself to argue with Brown.
"There!" he exclaimed, darting to the open window. "Can't you hear it?"
I listened. "Oh, that," I said; "that's——"
"The mating song of the male reed-warbler," interrupted Brown ecstatically. "Now, whatever happens, don't let them be disturbed. Don't even try to find the nest, or you may alarm them. Leave it all to me. I shan't have a free morning till Saturday, but there's no hurry. I'll bring my camera round then, and when I've located the spot they're building in I'll rig up a hiding-place and take some photos. Don't let anybody go near them; the great thing is to make them feel quite at home." He was gone before I could explain.
It is rather an awkward situation, because, when Brown comes on Saturday morning, I am afraid that if he secures any really successful photos they will prove a disappointment to him. They will represent my gardener, Williams, trundling a barrow, the wheel of which is badly in need of oil.