BIRD-LIFE ON THE MOORS IN EARLY SPRING. 



23 



aflfairs during the stormy month of March. Perhaps the only 

 ones besides the Raven and the Owls are the Heron, the Rooks, 

 and the Little Dipper. A hardy sort is the last-named, and 

 no one who has heard them in full song during the severest 

 weather of mid-winter, or watched them blithely diving under 

 the fringe of fast ice along the burn-sides, when the tem- 

 perature is but little above zero, would be much surprised 

 if they commenced nesting at Christmas, Their most 

 favourite site is in the linns, or small waterfalls, where a 

 hill-burn comes tumbling over an exposed ridge of rock. 

 Many of these linns, with their shaggy fringe of gnarled and 



HOME OF THE DIPPER.. 



lichen-clad birch, heather, and bog-myrtle, are among the 

 wildest and most lovely nooks of the wild moorland. There, 

 in an interstice of the moss-grown rock, half overhung by 

 ferns, and all but indistinguishable from its environment, is 

 cunningly inserted the great round nest of green moss, in 

 the very spray of the falling water. The outside of their 

 home is splashed and wet. The old birds have to pass, to 

 and fro, through the fringe of the cascade, but that is just 

 what these little amphibians like, and hardly a linn but has 

 its pair of dusky, white-throated tenants. Other nests are 

 fixed on some big boulder islanded in mid-stream, and one 

 on a thick, gnarled branch overhanging the water. 



