16 BIRDS AND MAN 



the originals, but viewed them with indifference, or 

 unemotionally. 



With regard to birds, I see them mentally in two 

 ways : each species which I have known and ob- 

 served in its wild state has its type in the mind — 

 an image w^hich I invariably see when I think of the 

 species ; and, in addition, one or two or several, in 

 some cases as many as fifty, images of the same 

 species of bird as it appeared at some exceptionally 

 favourable moment and was viewed with peculiar 

 interest and pleasure. 



Of hundreds of such enduring images of our com- 

 monest species I will here describe one before con- 

 cluding w^th this part of the subject. 



The long-tailed or bottle-tit is one of the most 

 delicately pretty of our small woodland birds, and 

 among my treasures, in my invisible and intangible 

 album, there were several pictures of him which 1 

 had thought unsurpassable, until on a day two years 

 ago when a new and better one was garnered. I 

 was walking a few miles from Bath by the Avon 

 where it is not more than thirty or forty yards wide, 

 on a cold, wdndy, very bright day in February. The 

 opposite bank was lined with bushes growing close 

 to the water, the roots and lower trunks of many of 

 them being submerged, as the river was very full ; 



