BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 199 



always the most delightful bends of the streams, the most 

 charming- nooks and corners of the waterways and pools 

 that the kingfisher haunts. Where the scenery is open and 

 tame, he is only a passer-by. But where his beauty adds 

 the one charm of life, and beautiful life, that was needed to 

 make some special "bit" of loveliness complete, there the 

 kingfisher lives. It is a sweet little poem, this bird. Does it 

 see any of the beauty that we do in these archways of willow 

 and alder, this exquisite embroidery of forget-me-nots upon 

 the brink, this clump of yellow flags and fair tall willow- 

 herb .^^ One could almost imagine that it does, so careful 

 is it to pitch its camp just where Nature is at its best. 

 Here the banks are flowered and prettily uneven with mossy 

 stumps and roots "peeping out upon the brook." The moor- 

 hen is at home here, and that delightful, harmless little beast 

 the water-vole. 



I remember once seeing a water-vole sitting up at its front 

 door in the sun, nibbling its crisp salad of young reed-shoot : on 

 one side of it grew a tuft of " faint sweet cuckoo-flower," and 

 just above it was a great rosette of primroses, and I thought I 

 had never seen anything more enchanting than this quiet little 

 touch of innocent and pretty spring. 



One of them has his hole yonder where there is a little 

 overhanging bulge in the bank, and that little platform which 

 seems neatly laid with rushes is his dining-room, and from it, 

 running either way, you can easily trace the small animal's 



