CHAPTER XVIII.
THE LOCAL ORNITHOLOGY.
’Twas then we heard the cuckoo’s note
Sound sweetly through the air,
And everything around us looked
Most beautiful and fair.
OLD SONG.
ALL lovers of the woods and fields are interested in our native birds. Many of their sincerest pleasures are associated with birds; they listen for the song of the thrush in early spring; for the note of the cuckoo, inestimable herald of the summer, voiceful when all else is voiceless, magnet of the heart in quiet evenings as we tread the rising grass or scent the new–cut hay;—and when the corn is awaiting the sickle, for the crec crec of the land–rail. So with the sweet spectacle of the little nests, hidden away in the hawthorn or ancient ivy–bush. So again with the graceful movements of very many,
The thin–winged swallow skating on the air;
the lengthened undulations of the yellow wagtail; the flutter of the goldfinch about the thistle–stems; the rich and massive sailing of the rooks when homeward bound, so grand, in particular, as they descend to their night covert in the trees. “Who was it,” asks Mr. Bright, who so happily applied to rooks the lines in the sixth Æneid, where Virgil, speaking of the descent of Æneas and his guide upon the Elysian plains, says,
Devenere locos lætos, et amœna vireta
Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas?