Surrey

The first sheaves of oats on the hillside shone yellow in this morning’s sun, and the stubble crinkled underfoot on the way up to the oak wood, where the late shoots covered with young light green leaves made every branch appear from the distance as though it were tipped with gold. Beyond the oaks there is a long plantation of larch and fir, with a big straggling ash here and there; woodmen were clearing out some of the overgrown mass of timber, a disturbed stoat ran across the trackway; above, a squirrel went almost as readily from top to top of tall trees; from the hollow where a rough pit has been dug the sound of a two-handled saw mixed pleasantly with the sharper note of the axe and the crack of a falling fir.

Country diary 1918: summer life in Surrey Read more

At this last a few birds, blackcaps and a pair of doves, flew straight up, alarmed by the uncommon noise. The other sounds are more familiar. The axe may bite sharply into the tree trunk, but you would hardly perceive one bird in the whole wood, except perhaps a jay, that seems to delight himself in a commotion, flying between and about the limbs as though he had some kind of story to tell the green leaves. There was a noisier party in the border of the oak wood; young blackbirds, five of them, just able to fly, but not to venture farther than a few yards from bough to bough. All the time they cried one to another in a helpless way from morning till afternoon, and we shall hear them, no doubt, till nightfall. By to-morrow they will have flown.