BIRD HARMONIES. 163
and sedgy shallows. Away in the purple distance the loch ends with
a wood, and to our left is a little stream stealing quietly through
tangled flags and rushes, to riot further away down the valley amongst
the boulders and shallows of its rocky bed. Further still on our left
where the grass land rises somewhat, are the ruins of an old castle
with quaint gable ends, its base covered with ivy.
The loch is as smooth as a mirror, and like a mirror reflects the
rushes and rocks and sky; this reflection every now and then being
broken here and there when a gust of wind comes rippling along, or
when a fish leaps, and then the edges of the mimic picture for a few
minutes are jagged and quivering. It is a beautiful solitude, and we
look around for the life. There it is, as perfect an embodiment of
the spirit of the scene as it is possible to conceive. A tall blue-grey
bird with black tipped wings, his long white-lined throat spotted with
black, doubled back on his breast. His head plumed with black,
and the long yellow bill resting on the neck, yellow eyes gazing
intently downwards, apparently at his own reflection. He stands as
motionless as if he were only a painted heron. The neutral tints of
his plumage make his figure stand out clear and sharp against the
surrounding browns and greens of rock and marsh; and there is a
pensiveness apparently in his quaint pose which brings him, as it
were, into the same key as that of surrounding nature.
Then we pass on down by the river side as it runs towards the
sea. In the woods we hear the tapping of the woodpecker on the
hollow beech tree, and, if we are fortunate, we get a glimpse of his
green and gold plumage as he flies across a glade. The jays are
screaming all round us and flitting from tree to tree, and from the
depths of the wood comes the soft crooning of the wood doves.
Further down, where the river runs through the marshes, we see
flocks of peewits, green-backed and plume-crested, hovering and
wheeling, now flashing in the light as they turn their undersides
towards us, and then suddenly, as they turn again their black and
green backs, are shadowed into a dark moving mass of specks. Away
in the distance from over the sands come the plaintive cries of the
curlew.
It appears to be one of the elements of natural harmony that the
voices of birds should be pitched, to use a musical simile, in the same
key as the scene where they are mostly heard. There is a wild
plaintiveness and an undertone of sadness in the cries of the birds
which are the life of the solitudes and wastes of nature, very different