CHAPTER XV 



MEADOW, STREAM AND PASTURE 



(Pied, Grey, and Yellow Wagtails, and Kingfisher) 



AMONG the most familiar, because it is the most 

 universally recognized of our smaller wild birds, 

 the pied wagtail has much to commend it to our 

 interest outside its bright and conspicuous colouring. 

 These, indeed, mark it out as one apart and unmistakable, 

 never failing to catch the eye of even the most casual 

 observer, though far commoner birds may appear as 

 strangers when they are noticed, but besides being 

 cheerful in appearance, the impression is very amply 

 borne out by the wagtail's ways and manners. A nymph 

 of fragrant country gardens, where it appears as an 

 almost inseparable part of the green braes and grass 

 plots, to nest season after season in the crumbling 

 boundary wall or among the rockery plants, we come 

 somehow to associate its presence with the scent of the 

 moist turf after an April shower ; and as the young grow 

 up and accompany their parents, running hither and 

 thither about the grass, they seem so essentially to be 

 part of the property that they hold a place no other bird 

 can hold. The rooks in the elm grove are one, the robin 

 at the window is another, but none of them is so inseparably 

 the spirit of its environment as the water wagtail standing 

 amidst the green mosses at the fountain edge. And per- 

 haps the fact that the wagtails are with us for the most 

 part only during the brightest months, has something 

 to do with these associations, just as the song and the 



229 



