Other birds that kept themselves very much out of sight during most of the time also came to the same small tree at that early hour. It was regularly visited, and its thin bole industriously examined, by the nuthatch and the quaint little mouse-like creeper. Doubtless they imagined that five o'clock was too early for heavy human creatures to be awake, and were either ignorant of my presence or thought proper to ignore it. But where, during the days when the vociferous cuckoo, with hoarse chuckle and dissyllabic call and wild bubbling cry was so much with us--where, in this period of many pleasant noises was the cuckoo's mate, or maid, or messenger, the quaint and beautiful wryneck? There are few British birds, perhaps not one--not even the crafty black and white magpie, or mysterious moth-like goatsucker, or tropical kingfisher--more interesting to watch. At twilight I had lingered at the woodside, also in other likely places, and the goatsucker had failed to appear, gliding and zig-zagging hither and thither on his dusky-mottled noiseless wings, and now this still heavier disappointment was mine. I could not find the wryneck. Those quiet grassy orchards, shut in by straggling hedges, should have had him as a favoured summer guest. Creeper and nuthatch, and starling and gem-like blue tit, found holes enough in the old trunks to breed in. And yet I knew that, albeit not common, he was there; I could not exactly say where, but somewhere on the other side of the next hedge or field or orchard; for I heard his unmistakable cry, now on this hand, now on that. Day after day I followed the voice, sometimes in my eagerness forcing my way through a brambly hedge to emerge with scratched hands and clothes torn, like one that had been set upon and mauled by some savage animal of the cat kind; and still the quaint figure eluded my vision.