CHAPTER XLI 



THE LESSER REDPOLL 



When the lush marshes are gay with purple and rosy water- 

 grasses, waving beds of cotton-grass, and islets bright with 

 ragged-robin, sweet-smelling patches of moist and many- 

 twinkling orchid eyes, the redpoll's low song is to be heard 

 in the islets of bramble and sallow that dot the green marsh- 

 land sea — a song often heard as the bird flies by with its un- 

 tiring linnet-like flight, a song that mingles beautifully with 

 the insect-like voice of the grasshopper warbler, the speckled 

 red-leg's cries, and the mournful peewit's notes. The rich 

 marshes are growing ripe for the scythe ere the redpoll 

 begins to nest, for he is a late nester — rarely building 

 before the end of May. All the preliminary courting flights 

 about the leafy sallow-bushes over, the hen bird begins to 

 build that most exquisite little specimen of nest architecture 

 — her rushy cradle securely lodged in a spray of sallow, or 

 more rarely in a branchlet of alder, and most rarely in an 

 apple-tree in some fenman's garden, or perhaps in a hedge- 

 row ; but they love the marshland best. The hen with her 

 little bill and feet deftly weaves the light shell of pale straw- 

 coloured grass, then lines it most decoratively with a light 

 bed of dindle fluff or catkin flowers, or, more beautifully still, 

 with the sweet white down of the cotton-grass, or at times 

 with a beautiful fringe of swan's down, the tips of the feathers 

 only showing, and all curving beautifully inwards — the frail 

 structure with its five blue eggs looking like some strange 

 but lovely incurved flower of the marshes. 



And if any fenman draw near her whilst engaged in this 

 lovely work she and her gay little husband will flit about on 

 the sallow branches, keeping close to his side, calling with 



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