small. the size of a wren or thereabouts. you will not see it before dusk. you will not see it after the first lamps come on. it occupies a quarter of an hour and then is gone, the way some songs are.
habitat: hedgerow, broken fence, the line of trees behind a garden wall. it favours places where the day is ending into something less precise. the call is two thin notes and a longer one — un-named in the local books; recorded once, badly, on a phonograph by an attic boarder.
it does not flush easily. it is a careful bird and it has listened to a great many four-a.m.s before it sings. when it leaves it leaves without sound, the branch barely springing back. the ash tree at the corner is where it has been seen most often.
— heard it for the third time. did not bring the glass; did not need to. — m., field notebook, april.