50 BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 



'' He walks still upright from the root, 

 Measuring the timber with his foot, 

 And all the way to keep it clean 

 Doth from the bark the wood-moths glean. 

 He with his beak examines well 

 Which fit to stand and which to fell. 

 The good he numbers up and tracks, 

 As if he marked them with an axe; 

 And when he, tinkling with his beak, 

 Doth find the hollow out to speak, 

 That for his building he designs, 

 And through the tainted hide he mines." 



The coot, too, is a bird only familiar to such as dwell 

 near quiet waters — a whimsical and odd-mannered amphibian, 

 that gives a very pleasing- animation to the sequestered places 

 it frequents, for wdiether diving and ducking in the water, or 

 moving with flicking tail about the banks, in that "jerky, 

 high-stepping manner " which Dudley Warner disliked so 

 delightfully in his neighbours' hens, it is a fowl of pantomimic 

 behaviour that is very diverting to watch. 



Other birds, aorain, are too common to be sitrnificant of 

 time or of season, though, among them are many of the most 

 popular of our feathered folk — the beautiful and merry 

 chaffinch, the roadside yellowhammer, the linnets that are 

 everywhere, the delightful goldfinch and bullfinch, the sweet- 

 song hedge-sparrow, the handsome monotonous greenfinch, 

 the ubiquitous sparrow — " meanest of the feathered race," as 

 Cowper unkindly calls it — and the dainty water-wagtails that 



