Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/220

164 the jay utters a heart-rending shriek, and the wood-pigeon clatters through the branches on noisy wing. All, including the young thrush which seeps continuously only a few feet away, are hidden or only visible for a moment. The trustful robin is the only bird really in evidence, tor no sooner do we enter the wood than we hear its subdued song of welcome, and see it ﬂit across our path to perch eyeing us with friendly gaze; it exhibits no annoyance at our presence and certainly no apprehension. Man, it shows by its behaviour, is looked upon as a friend, a companion. Beyond the reed fringe the playful mallard flappers are splashing; their elders chuckle in contented tones, and now and again utter a sonorous quack. Coots and moorhens utter explosive and loud metallic remarks; immature grebes with striped cheeks and necks follow their stately parents with incessant querulous demands for attention, and now and again the cheerful dabchick ripples out its laughing trill.

The bird voices are accompanied by a constant murmur, which rises and falls in volume and varies in quality. A puff of wind raises a gentle rustle amidst the leaves; a gleam of sunshine and the buzz of millions of gauzy insect wings swells into a boom. The stout and bustling humble-bee leads with a deep bass rumble as it blunders from blossom to blossom on the bramble or stirs the dust amidst the tree roots as it searches for something, the bee alone knows what. The hover fly hangs motionless in the ride, its whirring wings—a mere blurr to our slow sight—singing tenor; the annoying banded gnat produces a shrill treble scream two inches from our ear. Reflexly we raise an arm and sweep the air, but never hit the singer. A small tortoiseshell butterfly and many diurnal moths, a skimming, darting dragonfly, "with loud latticed sails," bees and wasps of various kinds, two-winged flies of every description, from a great bluebottle with a chequered