On approaching it this apparent cloud is found to consist of thousands of starlings, the noise of whose calling to each other is indescribable--the country folk call it a `charm,' meaning a noise made up of innumerable lesser sounds, each interfering with the other. The vastness of these flocks is hardly credible until seen; in winter the bare trees on which they alight become suddenly quite black. Once or twice in the summer starlings may be observed hawking to and fro high in the air, as if imitating the swallows in an awkward manner. Probably some favourite insect is then on the wing, and they resort to this unwonted method to capture it. Beyond the fir trees the copse runs up into a corner, where hawthorn bushes, briar, and bramble succeed to the ash-stoles, and are in turn bordered by some width of furze and brake fern. When this fern is young and fresh the sunshine glistens on its glossy green fronds, but on coming nearer the sheen disappears. On a very hot sultry day towards the end of summer there is occasionally a peculiar snapping sound to be heard in the furze, as if some part of the plant, perhaps the seed, were bursting. The shocks of wheat, too, will crackle in the morning sun. This corner, well sheltered by furze and brake, is one of `sly Reynard's' favourite haunts. The stems of the furze, when they grow straight, are occasionally cut for walking-sticks. Wood-pigeons visit the copse frequently--in the spring there are several nests--and towards evening their hollow notes are repeated at intervals. Though without the slightest pretensions to a song, there is something soothing in their call, pleasantly suggestive of woodland glades and deep shady dells. Just before the shooting season opens there is a remarkable absence of song from hedge and tree: even the chirp of the house-sparrow is seldom heard on the roof, where only recently it was loud and continuous. Most of the sparrows have, in fact, left the houses in flocks and resorted to the cornfields after the grain. In this silent season the robin, the wood-pigeon, and the greenfinch, seem the only birds whose notes are at all common: the pigeons call in the evening as they come to the copse, the greenfinches in a hushed kind of way talk to each other in the hedge, and the robin plaintively utters a few notes on the tree. It is not absolute silence indeed; but the difference is very noticeable. Through the ash-poles on one side of the copse distant glimpses may be obtained of gleaming water, where a creek of the shallow lake runs in towards it. Bordering the furze a thick hawthorn hedge--a double mound--extends, so wide as to be itself almost another copse. In the `rowetty' grass on the bank or in the hollow places, under fallen leaves and trailing ivy, the hedgehog hides during the day, so completely concealed that while the sun shines it is extremely difficult to find one without a dog.