THE ''BLOOD" LINNET 113 



nature that both birds tend their nesthngs, feeding them and 

 carrying off the gHstening little bags of meconium deliberately 

 dropped by the cleanly young upon the grassy rims of the 

 nest. For a dainty clean-living little bird is the linnet. 



But there is another side to the picture. On a bright 

 day in early summer you may perhaps be attracted by the 

 glorious shimmering living yellow of a bed of turnip in 

 flower, blazing beneath an azure cloud-flecked sky. Ah ! 

 that is a sight to live for each returning year. 



But wait a little later, when the burning July sun shall 

 have ripened the yellow florets into seed. Then you will 

 see the linnets — hundreds of them — flocking to and fro 

 amongst the strange-smelling crop ; for not dearer is the 

 heather, mignonette, or thyme to the bee than turnip-seed to 

 the linnet. The farmer's man, with rusty old shoulder-gun, 

 may stand sentinel by the precious crop and shoot them 

 down a dozen at a shot at one end of the bed — still will 

 they fly off with mellow pipings to the other end of the bed. 

 At such season, by the gunner, you will see a pile of mangled 

 birds — young and old if it be late in the season — food for 

 his ferrets. And later, when the turnip crop shall have been 

 harvested, you may see flocks of a hundred, ay, and two 

 hundred, rise with chucklings as you approach the shorn 

 seed-bed. 



Later in the season, when the wild parsley-flower heads 

 stream in unpremeditated grace across the marshlands, like a 

 troop of laughing maidens tripping over the dew-loaded bents, 

 you will find the rose-speckled flocks have gone to the osier 

 cars in search of food. There in the sweet September 

 evenings you may hear their song — a lullaby of the dying 

 year. And as you stand on the white road, fringed with 

 dewy grass, and listen, you may see the whole flock arise 

 with chuckling laughs high into the air and spread like a 

 fan over the sallows in the greying evening sky, whirling 

 round and round beneath the misty stars ere they pitch 

 headlong back into the osier cars, and their sweet voices 



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