Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/139

Rh to range the woods in family parties, and the Rooks, with such juveniles as have escaped the baptism of fire which greeted their first fluttering appearance as "branchers," again betake themselves to meadow and corn-field.

Turn where we will this May morning, when the woods are all one blue sheen of wild hyacinths, there is something of interest to note. The air is cleared and freshened by the showers of the night and every birdthroat is thrilling with song. Willow Wrens answer each other in a ceaseless chime. See the Whitethroat as he bustles and fusses into and out of the hedge, then throws himself into the air to sing. Next, with a beak full of dry bents he disappears, just where the nettles are growing up thickly through the lower part of the bramble bush. Anon he dances off to a hedgerow tree, singing as he flies, a restless sprite with all the pleasing fever of spring-time in his blood. His flimsy nursery, when finished, is so slight and frail, that the eggs can almost be seen through it. What varying grades of craftmanship are exemplified by the nests which one may meet with in a May morning! At the foot of the scale is the scanty handful of twigs upon which the ring-dove broods, more pigeon than nest. A decided advance is shown by the platform of sticks which the sparrow-hawk builds upon the side branches half way up the stem of the larch. While the exquisitely neat nest of the chaffinch exemplifies what