The wood pigeons begin to come home, and the wood is filled with their
hollow notes: now here, now yonder, for as one ceases another takes it
up. They cannot settle for some time: each as he arrives perches awhile,
and then rises and tries a fresh place, so that there is a constant
clattering. The green woodpecker approaches at a rapid pace--now
opening, now closing his wings, and seeming to throw himself forward
rather than to fly. He rushes at the trees in the hedge as though he
could pierce the thick branches like a bullet. Other birds rise over or
pass at the side: he goes through, arrow-like, avoiding the boughs.
Instead of at once entering the wood, he stays awhile on the sward of
the mead in the open.

As the pheasants generally feed in a straight line along the ground, so
the lesser pied woodpecker travels across the fields from tree to tree,
rarely staying on more than one branch in each, but, after examining it,
leaves all that may be on other boughs and seeks another ahead. He rises
round and round the dead branch in the elm, tapping it with blows that
succeed each other with marvellous rapidity. He taps for the purpose of
sounding the wood to see if it be hollow or bored by grubs, and to
startle the insects and make them run out for his convenience. He will
ascend dead branches barely half an inch thick that vibrate as he
springs from them, and proceeds down the hedge towards the wood. The
'snop-top' sounds in every elm, and grows fainter as he recedes. The
sound is often heard, but in the thick foliage of summer the bird
escapes unseen, unless you are sitting almost under the tree when he
arrives in it.

Then the rooks come drifting slowly to the beeches: they are uncertain
in their hour at this season--some, indeed, scarce care to return at
all; and even when quite dusk and the faint stars of summer rather show