230 BIRD WATCHING 



and sometimes, whilst doing so, pecks at the great 

 black trunk. Now he is standing on them con- 

 tentedly, with the water touching his crimson breast- 

 feathers. He is in his first or more primitive 

 figure, for the robin has two. Either he is a little 

 round globe with a sunset in him — his rotundity 

 being broken only by a beak and a tail — or else 

 very elegant, dapper, and well set up. In the first 

 he is fluffy, for he has ruffled out his feathers, but 

 in the last he has pressed them down and is smooth 

 and glossy — has almost a polish on him." Again, 

 whilst walking by the river in the early morning, 

 the water being very low, " a robin hops down 

 over the exposed shingle, to near the water's edge, 

 then flies across to the opposite more muddy sur- 

 face, and hops along it, pecking here and there. 

 He again flies across and proceeds in the same way, 

 always going up the stream, crosses again, and so on. 

 Each time he is farther away from me, and now I 

 lose sight of him ; but this is evidently his system. 

 How out of character he seems amidst the mud and 

 ooze of the dank river-bed on this chill winter's 

 morning, how little like the robin of poetry and 

 Christmas-card, how much more in the style of some 

 little mud-loving, stilt-walking bird : for this is often 

 their manner of zig-zagging from shore to shore up 

 or down the stream. I have noticed it but now in the 

 redshank. Yet the old associations are with him, 

 for this is home, and the thatched cottage peeps over 

 the familiar hedge." 



And here I will chronicle an experience — my own, 

 if it be not that of others. Provided there be shrub- 

 bery about, there are but few places here in England 



