122 BIRDS OF THE WATER 



Often, too, on the coastal lagoons you may 

 notice Mm passing lightly over the estuarine 

 sud, delicately picking up flies and tiny 

 insects, as much a Wagtail in his flights 

 and runs and sudden changes as any Ground 

 Lark can be. Then, as the Flycatcher, he 

 may be seen hawking by the hour from 

 some high chosen perch, perhaps the top 

 of some tall fire-charred, broken bole, or 

 may be he has selected some little eminence 

 on a sharp ridged spur, where his view is 

 fully clear, and where the snap of his 

 mandibles, his airy convolutions and sudden 

 excursions, turn him into the Flycatcher. 



Metamorphosised again into the Robin 

 Redbreast, he will do his share, too, in 

 garden work, keeping just out of hoe and 

 rake reach, and picking up with short, deft 

 runs, the white, soft, sleepy, disinterred 

 larvae of the green beetle. Often and often 

 when gardening have I had one or two 

 of these cheerful little companions, quite 

 friendly but never overbold, and always 

 wearing that veil of shyness so peculiarly 

 their own. Never would the Ground Lark 

 wear the abstracted, distrait look of an 



