114 BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



are stilled in sleep. And when the roaring equinox shall 

 have bared the osiers of their leaves many of them will start 

 across the salt sea for a warmer clime, whilst others, leaving 

 their old homes, will hie to the new-laid barley fields with a 

 greedy crowd of hungry finches, where they work mischief to 

 the husbandman ; and none are more hateful to the barley- 

 sower than the green-finches and linnets, as none work more 

 evil to a newly-sprouted turnip field, except maj^hap the 

 mischievous lark, who works much evil amongst the fine- 

 leaved turnips that have escaped the fl}', but have still to 

 " apple." 



And the bird-trapper knows this, and with his nets captures 

 hundreds, but your sweetest pet is always the young nestling, 

 reft from his home ere he begins to " take notice." He may 

 be even the happier in captivity, but old birds, who mind not 

 the net, never do so well — though they, too, are soon tamed. 

 And the old fenman knows this, and when he wants a " blood 

 linnet" for his lonely home he watches the nests in linnet- 

 land or on some low grassy islet on the marshes until the 

 nestlings are some ten days old, when he places a wicker 

 cage round the nest, leaving the old birds to feed their 

 young through the bars, for this they are willing to do, so 

 strong is their love for their progeny, till they be some weeks 

 old and fit to take to his cottage by the water-side. 



But even such a sure method of capture has its cares, as 

 one old man told me who had trapped five nestlings. The 

 parents had fed them to a large size, for he was not over- 

 anxious to take them till the gorse bloomed by his cottage 

 door. Then he took them. And yet their capture was always 

 matter for regret to his simple soul, for one morning early, 

 soon after the larks had begun their matins, he heard the 

 penned linnets shrieking. Hastily rising from his bed, he 

 ran into the misty morn, and saw a bloody stoat, with hair 

 erect, clawing through the bars for the poor birds, most of 

 which he had already killed. Filled with ire, the old man 

 seized his yew-fir quant and struck at the stoat in fierce 



