I have patience to
look the other way there he stays, but again a glance sends him away.
This is repeated four or five times, till, finally, convinced that I
mean no harm and yet timorous and fearful of betrayal even in the act,
he dives down into the bramble bush.

After a brief interval he reappears on the other side of it, having
travelled through and left his prey with his brood in the nest there.
Assured by his success his mate follows now, and once having done it,
they continue to bring caterpillars, apparently as fast as they can pass
between the trees and the bush. They always enter the bush, which is
scarcely two yards from me, on one side, pass through in the same
direction, and emerge on the other side, having thus regular places of
entrance and exit.

As I stand watching these birds a flock of rooks goes over, they have
left the nesting trees, and fly together again. Perhaps this custom of
nesting together in adjacent trees and using the same one year after
year is not so free from cares and jealousies as the solitary plan of
the little white-throats here. Last March I was standing near a rookery,
noting the contention and quarrelling, the downright tyranny, and
brigandage which is carried on there. The very sound of the cawing,
sharp and angry, conveys the impression of hate and envy.

Two rooks in succession flew to a nest the owners of which were absent,
and deliberately picked a great part of it to pieces, taking the twigs
for their own use. Unless the rook, therefore, be ever in his castle his
labour is torn down, and, as with men in the fierce struggle for wealth,
the meanest advantages are seized on. So strong is the rook's bill that
he tears living twigs of some size with it from the bough. The
white-throats were without such envy and contention.

From hence the footpath, leaving the copse, descends into a hollow, with
a streamlet flowing through a little meadow, barely an acre, with a
pollard oak in the centre, the rising ground on two sides shutting out
all but the sky, and on the third another wood. Such a dreamy hollow
might be painted for a glade in the Forest of Arden, and there on the
sward and leaning against the ancient oak one might read the play
through without being disturbed by a single passer-by. A few steps
farther and the stile opens on a road.

There the teams travel with rows of brazen spangles down their necks,
some with a wheatsheaf for design, some with a swan. The road itse