. Bird life glimpses . rds have proceeded,especially as one species of the family has not got sovery much farther than this, even now. Rooks, then, to leave speculation and return tofact, are swayed, even in winter, by love as well asby hunger—those two great forces which, as Schillertells us, rule the world between them. They wake,presumably, hungry ; yet, before they can have fedmuch, make shift to spend a little while on thescene of their domestic blisses. Hunger then looksafter them till an hour or so before evening, whenthey return to their rookeries, and love takes up theball for as long
. Bird life glimpses . rds have proceeded,especially as one species of the family has not got sovery much farther than this, even now. Rooks, then, to leave speculation and return tofact, are swayed, even in winter, by love as well asby hunger—those two great forces which, as Schillertells us, rule the world between them. They wake,presumably, hungry ; yet, before they can have fedmuch, make shift to spend a little while on thescene of their domestic blisses. Hunger then looksafter them till an hour or so before evening, whenthey return to their rookeries, and love takes up theball for as long as daylight lasts. And so, with birdsas men— ** Erfiillt sich der Getriebe Durch Hunger und durch Llebe. HUNGER, LOVE, AND SLEEP 71 But there is a third great ruling power in the life ofboth, which Schiller seems to have forgotten—sleep—and as its reign, each day, is as long, or longer,than that of the other two conjoined, and as it longoutlasts one of them, it may be called, perhaps, thegreatest of the Heron Fishing CHAPTER IV There is a heronry on an estate here, into which,in the early spring, I have sometimes crept, comingbefore dawn, in silence and darkness, to be therewhen it awoke. What an awakening ! A suddenscream, as though the night were stabbed, and criedout—a scream to chill ones very blood—followedby a deep oogh, and then a most extraordinarynoise in the throat, a kind of croak sometimes, butmore often a kind of pipe, like a subdued siren—afog-signal—yet pleasing, even musical. Sometimes,again, it suggests the tones of the human voice—weirdly, eerily—vividly caught for a moment, thenan Ovids metamorphosis. This curious sound, inthe production of which the neck is as the longtube of some metal instrument, is very character-istic, and constantly heard. And now scream after 72 AN AWAKENING 73 scream, each one more harsh and wild than the last,rings out from tree to tree. Other sounds—strange,wild, grotesque—cannot even suffer an attem
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Keywords: ., bookauthorselo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds
