PERCHING BIRDS. 93 
most elegant of them all, its movements being very 
light and graceful. Though haunting the margin of 
the streams, it does not appear to enter the water so 
freely as the others, but seeks its food on the grass, on 
which it is well fitted for running by its much longer 
hind claws. At the same time I have remarked its 
fondness for frequenting the beds of the water daisy, 
which in summer nearly fills the stream with its waving 
masses, and where the birds appear to find a rich feast 
of aquatic insects. The pied wagtail is also constantly 
to be seen on these fish-beds, as they are called. 
I have once met with the yellow wagtail in the winter 
—viz., on February 8, 1848. It was a solitary bird in 
a meadow near my own garden, where it was feeding by 
the side of a small carrier which takes the overflow from 
the stream above. 
Amongst our common summer birds is the Tree Pipit 
(Anthus arboreus, Bech.). It is a favourite bird of 
mine, and in my solitary wanderings in the woods, its 
brief and singular flight and sweet song have often 
afforded me much pleasure ; its habits are rather shy, 
and I never saw more than a pair together. I have 
found it most frequent in the wooded parts of the forest, 
not amongst the plantations, but where the giant oaks are 
interspersed with the graceful birch. Its favourite perch 
is a withered limb of one of the old veterans, springing 
from which it soars upwards in the manner of the sky- 
lark for about twenty or thirty yards, describing a half 
spiral in its flight, when it descends diagonally on out- 
stretched wings and tail to the branch which it left. It 
is during its downward flight that its song is uttered, 
and sometimes, though but rarely, from its perch. With 
us it is seldom, if ever, met with in the cultivated parts, 
