But the following picture of a "wet spell" is more English than American:—
"The ox hath therefore stretch'd his
yoke in vain,
The plowman lost his sweat; and
the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a
beard;
The fold stands empty in the
drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the
murrain flock."
Shakespeare knew the birds and wild fowl, and knew them perhaps as a hunter, as well as a poet. At least this passage would indicate as much:—
"As wild geese that the creeping
fowler eye,
Or russet-pated choughs, many in
sort,
Rising and cawing at the gun's
report,
Sever themselves and madly sweep
the sky."
In calling the choughs "russet-pated" he makes the bill tinge the whole head, or perhaps gives the effect of the birds' markings when seen at a distance; the bill is red, the head is black. The chough is a species of crow.
A poet must know the birds well to make one of his characters say, when he had underestimated a man, "I took this lark for a bunting," as LAFEU says of PAROLLES in "All's Well that Ends Well." The English bunting is a field-bird like the lark, and much resembles the latter in form and color, but is far inferior as a songster. Indeed, Shakespeare shows his familiarity with nearly all the British birds.
"The ousel-cock, so black of hue,
With orange-tawny bill,
The throstle with his note so true,
The wren with little quill.
"The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,
The plain-song cuckoo gray,
Whose note full many a man doth
mark.
And dares not answer nay."
In "Much Ado about Nothing" we get a glimpse of the lapwing:—
"For look where Beatrice, like a
lapwing, runs
Close by the ground, to hear our
conference."
The lapwing is a kind of plover, and is very swift of foot. When trying to avoid being seen they run rapidly with depressed heads, or "close by the ground," as the poet puts it. In the same scene, HERO says of URSULA:—