CHAPTER XXVI 



THE WAGTAILS 



A DECORATIVE, elegant little family are the wagtails — 

 birds that should be dedicated to the Muse of Painting. 

 Whether on a winter's morn you see the common wagtail 

 darting to and fro — tracing lovely patterns across an old 

 wall as he hawks for drowsy flies dozing in the sun ; or 

 whether it be the pied wagtail tripping daintily along a 

 silver dike, snapping dead flies floating by the shore ; or 

 whether it be a graceful yellow wagtail, flying elegantl}'' 

 above a water-ranunculus petalled dike in early spring, his 

 yellow and black and white tail cutting the air flamewise ; 

 or, lastly, whether it be a lovely blue-headed wagtail running 

 daintily along the green top of a marsh wall, stopping to 

 dart swiftly at the flies collected in a horse's track — all are the 

 same — all are elegant, graceful, dainty, lovely to look upon ; 

 and, as the nightingale is the voice of the English landscape, 

 so is the yellow wagtail the bright and graceful jewel of our 

 low-toned English landscape. 



The yellow wagtail, or " wangtail," as the fenmen call him, 

 arrives in Norfolk early in April. As you are walking over 

 the grassy marshes, bright with the lazy dike-weeds, now 

 in flower and gay with Parnassian-grass petals, you start 

 as a flash of yellow light gleams athwart the lush green, 

 and you smile, and your heart is glad, for 'tis your first 

 " yellow-hammer," as the Broadsmen often wrongly call him. 

 Already the many pied wagtails have arrived, but there is 

 still the blue-headed one — that rare visitor to the Broads — to 

 follow. In a few days, the marshlands and dikes will be 



