Peeping from ivy-bowered seclusion for sight of flashing hawk, a robin slips like a copper oak leaf from its nest. Inside the lined cup of bent and horsehair five naked fledgelings lie sleeping. By the pale cuckoo flowers the mother searches, capturing with swift movements insects that toil among the rootlets. She returns with a beakful, but her children will not rouse from slumber. A chirping comes from the hedge above, where a drab hedge-sparrow has her brood. She inspects with grave demeanour their orange gapes and divides the food among them. They gulp, then plead vainly with hoarse squeaks for more. Over the hedge she drops, joining the host of wrens, whitethroats, blackbirds, thrushes, and red mice, all looking for food. The rising club of the wild arum is purple within its sheath; soon the “lords-and-ladies” will attract the children to their “river.” The stream is singing a mazed melody of soft sounds; by listening intently each can be distinguished. Different notes arise from the shattering of a crystal bubble upon the stones, the hollow dripple of a pebble rolled over the shallows, the foamy swirling past willow trunks moss-covered, the splashing into dwarfed trout-pools. Where a sunbeam loads the ripples a gold network drifts over the sand, holding a twig in its eddy; or the wind stirs the leaves, and a million sunpoints are thrown upwards like a silvery flight of starlings. From the mud precious doubloons have been raised by the root-divers of the kingcups, and are cast thickly by the bank.