While this nesting was going on I could hear five different birds at once either in the garden or from any of the windows. The doves cooed, and every now and then their gentle tones were overpowered by the loud call of the wood-pigeons. A cuckoo called from the top of the tallest birch, and a nightingale and a brook-sparrow (or sedge-reedling) were audible together in the common on the opposite side of the road. It is remarkable that one season there seems more of one kind of bird than the next. The year alluded to, for instance, in this copse was the wood-pigeons' year. But one season previously the copse seemed to belong to the missel-thrushes. Early in the March mornings I used to wake as the workmen's trains went rumbling by to the great City, to see on the ceiling by the window a streak of sunlight, tinted orange by the vapour through which the level beams had passed. Something in the sense of morning lifts the heart up to the sun. The light, the air, the waving branches speak; the earth and life seem boundless at that moment. In this it is the same on the verge of the artificial City as when the rays come streaming through the pure atmosphere of the Downs. While thus thinking, suddenly there rang out three clear, trumpet-like notes from a tree at the edge of the copse by the garden. A softer song followed, and then again the same three notes, whose wild sweetness echoed through the wood. The voice of the missel-thrush sounded not only close at hand and in the room, but repeated itself as it floated away, as the bugle-call does. He is the trumpeter of spring: Lord of March, his proud call challenges the woods; there are none who can answer. Listen for the missel-thrush: when he sings the snow may fall, the rain drift, but not for long; the violets are near at hand. The nest was in a birch visible from the garden, and that season seemed to be the missel-thrush's. Another year the cuckoos had possession. There is a detached ash tree in the field by the copse; it stands apart, and about sixty or seventy yards from the garden. A cuckoo came to this ash every morning, and called there for an hour at a time, his notes echoing along the building, one following the other as wavelets roll on the summer sands. After awhile two more used to appear, and then there was a chase round the copse, up to the tallest birch, and out to the ash tree again. This went on day after day, and was repeated every evening. Flying from the ash to the copse and returning, the birds were constantly in sight; they sometimes passed over the house, and the call became so familiar that it was not regarded any more than the chirp of a sparrow. Till the very last the cuckoos remained there, and never ceased to be heard till they left to cross the seas.