the buildings, one following the other as waves roll on the summer sands. Flying from the ash to the copse, or along the copse hedge, the cuckoo that year was as often seen as the sparrows, and as little notice was taken of him. Several times cuckoos have flown over this house, but just clearing the roof, and descending directly they were over to the copse. He has not called so much this year yet, but on the evening of May 8 he was crying in the copse at half-past eight while the moon was shining. On the morning of May 2, standing in the garden, or at the window of any of the rooms facing south, you could hear five birds calling together. The cuckoo was calling not far from the tallest birch; there was a turtle-dove cooing in the copse much closer; and a wood-pigeon overpowered the dove's soft voice every two or three minutes--the pigeon was not fifty yards distant; a wryneck was perched up in an oak at the end of the garden, and uttered his peculiar note from time to time, and a nightingale was singing on Tolworth Common, just opposite the house, though on the other side. These were all audible, sometimes together, sometimes alternately; and if you went to the northern windows or the front door, looking towards the common, then you might also hear the chatter of a brook-sparrow. The dove has a way of gurgling his coo in the throat. The wryneck's 'kie-kie-kie,' the last syllable plaintively prolonged, is not like the call or songs of other birds; it reminds one of the peacock's strange scream, not in its actual sound, but its singularity. When it is suddenly heard from the midst of the thick green hedges of a summer's day, the bird itself unseen, it has a weird sound, which does not accord, like the blackbird's whistle, with our trees; it seems as if some tropical bird had wandered hither. I have heard the wryneck calling in the oak at the end of the garden every morning this season before rising, and suspect, from his constant presence, that a nest will be built close by. Last year the wryneck was a scarce bird in this neighbourhood; in all my walks I heard but two or three, and at long intervals. This year there are plenty; I hear them in almost every walk I take. There is one in the orchard beside the Red Lion Inn; another frequents the hedges and trees behind St. Matthew's Church; up Claygate Lane there is another--the third or fourth gateway on the left side is the place to listen. One year a pair built, I am sure, close to the cottage which stands by itself near the road on Tolworth Common. I saw them daily perched on the trees in front, and heard them every time I passed. There were not many, or we did not notice them, at home, and therefore I have observed them with interest. Now there is one every morning at the end of the garden. This nightingale, too, that sings on Tolworth Common just opposite, returns there every year, and, like the cuckoo to the copse, he is late in his