And all of a sudden the solitary corn-crake cries from the wheat. At once the whole air seems to hush: the very evening to listen. _Crake-crake_ comes the cry, and there gathers over the scene an indescribable atmosphere of completest tranquillity. _Crake-crake._ Far away, somewhere in the dip beyond the rise, sounds a sheep-bell, and the chiding voice of the shepherd's dog. But there is not a sound besides. _Crake-crake._ And the mist creeps up the corn-stalks, and covers the campions, and the air grows damp with dew. It is going to be another hot day to-morrow, just as it has been to-day. _Crake-crake_, cries the creeping rail, and
[Illustration: THE CORN-CRAKE AND ITS COMPANIONS]
never a voice replies. And so homewards, up through the meadow, hummocked with hay-cocks, and rough to the feet with short grass-stubble, from which the sleepy skylarks spring at every step: up to the elms that shade the garden, and on to the lawn. The bats wheel overhead, their soft wings crumpling as they turn their somersaults, but never a voice in the air, save sharp needle-points of sound, as flittermouse calls to flittermouse. Only from among the wheat, now here, now there, comes up the cry of the rail, _Crake-crake_.
It is a charming bird, sufficiently rare to make the seeing of it an event to remember all the summer; the finding of its nest a triumph. And then to see the young ones!--little black imps that run like spiders. Once only in my life could I have shot one. I was out with my gun, "strolling round" for the unconsidering evening rabbit, when all of a sudden from under my feet, in the furrow that separated the turnips from a patch of lucerne, up got a bird, and its slow, clumsy flight told me that it was a corn-crake, and for the sake of its little black imps I lowered my gun and let the poor mother go.
But the corn-crake has done crying, or has wandered away into another field beyond hearing, and here in the garden the voices of Nature soon reassert themselves, and, resonant above the rest, the blackcap is singing
"musical and loud, Buried among the twinkling leaves."
Whence comes this little musician? It may be from Persia or Abyssinia, or perhaps it has only stepped across, so to speak, from Norway. But here it is with its nest among the ivy and periwinkles on the bank, and its beautiful eggs, delicious little mottled ovals of jasper, complete in number in their cobweb cup. It is odd how few people, even those who are "fond of birds," and have large gardens and grounds, know this little visitor by sight, or even by song. And yet it needs only a few minutes' patience when once the blackcap is seen to watch it to its nest, and that once done it can be examined, as I have examined it, with a magnifying-glass at the end of a walking-stick, while it sits upon its eggs. Few birds are really more trustful in the places they may choose for their nests, or more courageous in remaining upon them when approached, than this pretty bird with the lovely voice.