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Pushing through the undergrowth above the water, they found themselves in a tiny natural clearing such as poets of old would have described as a "a bower." Budding trees encircled it, a guelder rose bush overtopped it, and delicate fern-like moss sprang through the grass underfoot. There were fairies, too, in the bower; four little whitethroats were flitting about in the sunshine.
"Lie quietly concealed in the fern and bramble in the gap by the old rowan tree, and you may see, almost every evening during early summer, a pair of lesser whitethroats creeping up and down the nettles and hedge-growth that mask their nesting-place." The insufferable monotony of the proposed recreation!
My attention was first drawn to this fact by a struggle between two female Whitethroats, which I have described elsewhere. The scene of its occurrence was the corner of a small osier bed occupied by one male, and the females that took part in it had only recently arrived, but the male, an unpaired bird, had been in possession of its territory for some days.
A thrush was singing sweetly, whitethroats were busy in the bushes, and swallows swept by overhead. Felix drew a long deep breath of intense relief; it was like awakening in Paradise. He snatched up a cup, dipped, and satisfied his craving thirst, then washed his hands over the side, and threw the water over his face.
But other creatures were as busy as they. Strange little brown birds whitethroats and linnets perhaps, if the eye could only have followed them flew in and out of the blackthorn hedges all day long. Thrushes and blackbirds hopped pompously about the lawns, and the starlings chattered like old women on the roofs of the red gables.
They'd had their lesson, and learnt fear." "I once brought up a starling that had tumbled out of a nest," said Prissie, "and it was always perfectly tame, and would let me stroke it, and would perch on my hand. I had it for years. Do you think we could have kept the whitethroats?" "No, no!" said Carmel quickly. "I'd as soon think of caging fairies!
Eleanor would not have watched the most brilliant performance at His Majesty's Theatre for a single evening under such uncomfortable circumstances, and to be asked to watch lesser whitethroats creeping up and down a nettle "almost every evening" during the height of the season struck her as an imputation on her intelligence that was positively offensive.
In all, there were twenty-four Whitethroats, nine Willow-Warblers, eight Sedge-Warblers, and six Wheatears; and on dissection it was found that twenty Whitethroats, seven Willow-Warblers, eight Sedge-Warblers, and one Wheatear were males. What a curious departure this seems from the usual custom in the animal world!
In addition to the four pairs of Reed-Buntings, there were in the spring of 1915, six pairs of Whitethroats, one pair of Lesser Whitethroats, four pairs of Willow-Warblers, one pair of Sedge-Warblers, two pairs of Grasshopper-Warblers, one pair of Chiffchaffs, three pairs of Hedge-Sparrows, two pairs of Tree-Pipits, one pair of Skylarks, one pair of Whinchats, one pair of Flycatchers, two pairs of Song-Thrushes, one pair of Blackbirds, one pair of Redstarts, three pairs of Chaffinches, and one pair of Wrens in all, thirty-five pairs, whose young were mainly dependent for their living upon the insect life of that meadow and the ground immediately surrounding it.
The spotted meadow-orchis; the brown dots on the cowslips; brown, black, greenish, reddish dots and spots and dustings on the eggs of the finches, the whitethroats, and so many others some of the spots seem as if they had been splashed on and had run into short streaks, some mottled, some gathered together at the end; all spots, dots, dustings of minute specks, mottlings, and irregular markings.
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