was watching these plovers, a man with a gun got
over a gate into the road. Another followed, apparently without a
weapon, but as the first proceeded to take his gun to pieces, and put
the barrel in one pocket at the back of his coat, and the stock in a
second, it is possible that there was another gun concealed. The
coolness with which the fellow did this on the highway was astounding,
but his impudence was surpassed by his stupidity, for at the very moment
he hid the gun there was a rabbit out feeding within easy range, which
neither of these men observed.

The boughs of a Scotch fir nearly reached to one window. If I recollect
rightly, the snow was on the ground in the early part of the year, when
a golden-crested wren came to it. He visited it two or three times a
week for some time; his golden crest distinctly seen among the dark
green needles of the fir.

There are squirrels in the copse, and now and then one comes within
sight. In the summer there was one in the boughs of an oak close to the
garden. Once, and once only, a pair of them ventured into the garden
itself, deftly passing along the wooden palings and exploring a guelder
rose-bush. The pheasants which roost in the copse wander to it from
distant preserves. One morning in spring, before the corn was up, there
was one in a field by the copse calmly walking along the ridge of a
furrow so near that the ring round his neck was visible from the road.

In the early part of last autumn, while the acorns were dropping from
the oaks and the berries ripe, I twice disturbed a pheasant from the
garden of a villa not far distant. There were some oaks hard by, and
from under these the bird had wandered into the quiet sequestered
garden. The oak in the copse on which the squirrel was last seen is
peculiar for bearing oak-apples earlier than any other of the
neighbourhood, and there are often half-a-dozen of them on the twigs on
the trunk before there is one anywhere else. The famous snowstorm of
October 1880 snapped off the leader or top of this oak.

Jays often come, magpies more rarely, to the copse; as for the lesser
birds they all visit it. In the hornbeams at the verge blackcaps sing in
spring a sweet and cultured song, which does not last many seconds. They
visit a thick bunch of ivy in the garden. By these hornbeam trees a
streamlet flows out of the copse, crossed at the hedge by a pole, to
prevent cattle straying in. The pole is a robin's perch. He is always