56 



SPRING 



By the crowded third week in April, when so many new 

 birds and new nests meet us on every fresh walk, the cold 

 stream bank and edges of the pools are definitely beginning 

 to shoot green. Moorhens begin to nest abundantly, coots 

 build larger copies of the moorhens' nests, and the earliest 

 dabchicks pull together their heaps of sodden water-weed. 

 Where the dropping boughs of the willows are veiled with 



DABCHICKS 



young shoots of green, the pied wagtails take to the air in 

 pursuit of the insects hatched by the warmth, instead of 

 searching in their winter way along the waterside. Now 

 they build their flat, well-cushioned nests in the crannied 

 willows and in holes in the cowyard walls ; they lay their first 

 eggs about the time that the yellow wagtails or cowbirds 

 arrive among the yellow kingcups in the wet meadows. 

 Though pied wagtails often nest year after year close to the 

 same spot, they are less constant to one site than the so-called 

 grey wagtails, which build in late March or early April in 

 their favourite haunts by some bridge or cascade on the 

 western or northern streams. They leave the lower parts of 



