Beyond the clump is a combe, or valley, where every year a pair of carrion crows nest. They fly away as soon as they see me, four hundred yards below--they are crafty, and leave nothing to chance. In the stone hedges the celandines, flowers much bigger than those around London, shine like spilled meteor fragments against their leaves. Primroses grow with them, and the white blossom of the wild strawberry, and in places the stitchwort is in bloom. A flock of linnets sings in a hawthorn, a silver twittering of song coming as the wind rests; with a rustling of wings the flock leaves for the bloom of the gorse which everywhere is scenting the air. The apple trees in the orchard close below are beginning to bud, already goldfinches haunt their lichened branches, now fighting with gold-barred wings aflutter, now pausing to pipe sweet whispers of coming vernal glory, when the blossoms shall spill in showers of loveliness. Afar are the Burrows, and over their sogged wastes the green plovers wheel and fall, uttering wild calls to the wind, while their mates stand below, diving with broad pinions to earth as though they would die for love. High above a buzzard is sailing. To the right a great horse draws a plough against the skyline, and a dozen gulls follow in its wake; behind them trip and whistle four dishwashers, or wagtails. They say in the village that three pairs of ravens are nesting on the headland this year; I have seen but one. In this district a raven has only once been known to kill or “eye-pick” lambs, but that was many years ago, and then their breeding ledge was robbed in revenge. The raven has come near to extermination, like the peregrine falcon; but here both of these mighty fliers rarely molest the belongings of man; the one feeds on offal and dead rabbits that the stoats have left, and the other takes stock-doves, oystercatchers, wild duck, snipe, and ring-plover. In the early spring they stoop at gulls and diving birds just for exuberance of spirit. Certainly every tide leaves its dead among the seaweed and the beach-wrack: gulls and auks with their backs torn and ripped by the swift blue-hawks. THE INCOMING OF SUMMER