CHAPTER VII 



THE FIRETAIL 



The Redstart is rare in the Broadland, but the cock is a 

 beautiful bird when he flashes early in April across the 

 tender green of a newly-leaved thorn-hedge beneath a blue 

 sky. He is very shy and very active, and all you may see in 

 his passage is a patch of red and black chequering the back- 

 ground, or hopping this way and that from some spray to the 

 ground and back, producing on the mind the effect of a red 

 and black toy paper-mill. But his gayness leaves a bright 

 impression with you, for you cannot keep him in sight long ; 

 directly he perceives you are following, up he whisks with 

 a sharp turn across the hedge, and 'tis useless to follow. 

 I have never found his nest in Norfolk, but old nest-finders 

 tell me that he generally selects a hole in a tree — a 

 pollarded willow for preference — and that he returns year 

 after year to the same nesting-place, if not disturbed. But 

 very few must build in the Broadland, for I have seen scarce 

 one during the summer, and not until after harvest, when 

 the marshes grow beautiful with the chameleon-like beauty 

 of dying brilliancy, does the little firetail flicker across your 

 path again, chasing the insects that are daily growing scarcer, 

 as he knows full well ; for in September he leaves us, bound 

 on the old trail, " the trail that is always new," leaving us 

 a gay memory of whistling red and black. 



