BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 9
when a stranger couldn't show himself in the place without being jeered at and insulted. Yes, they were a rough lot down in that hole--the Badgers, they were called, and that's what they are called still."
The pity of it was that I didn't know this before I went among them! But it was not remembered against me that I had wounded their susceptibilities; they soon found that I was nothing but a harmless field naturalist, and I had friendly relations with many of them.
At the extremity of the straggling village was the beginning of an extensive common, where it was always possible to spend an hour or two without seeing a human creature. A few sheep grazed and browsed there, roaming about in twos and threes and half-dozens, tearing their fleeces for the benefit of nest-building birds, in the great tangled masses of mingled furze and bramble and briar. Birds were abundant there--all those kinds that love the common's openness, and the rough, thorny vegetation that flourishes on it. But the village--or rather, the large open space occupied by it, formed the headquarters and centre of a paradise of birds (as I soon began to think
10 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE
it), for the cottages and houses were widely separated, the meanest having a garden and some trees, and in most cases there was an old orchard of apple, cherry, and walnut trees to each habitation, and out of this mass of greenery, which hid the houses and made the place look more like a wood than a village, towered the great elms in rows, and in groups.
On first approaching the place I heard, mingled with many other voices, that of the nightingale; and as it was for the medicine of its pure, fresh melody that I particularly craved, I was glad to find a lodging in one of the cottages, and to remain there for several weeks.
The small care which the nightingale took to live up to his reputation in this place surprised me a little. Here he could always be heard in the daytime--not one bird, but a dozen--in different parts of the village; but he sang not at night. This I set down to the fact that the nights were dark and the weather unsettled. But later, when the weather grew warmer, and there were brilliant moonlight nights, he was still a silent bird except by day.
I was also a little surprised at his tameness.