OF THE MARSH 207 



brethren," it will assuredly be to some such birds as 

 the Ringed Plover, the Robin, the Chaffinch, and 

 perhaps a few others, that he will turn. These will 

 be his intermediaries ; not for any purely sentimental 

 reason, nor indeed for any uniform qualification, 

 unless it be a general disposition to approach him, to 

 watch what he does, to hang about him, and give 

 him a last chance. I have had tea with a wild 

 Chaffinch, and given him his portion at one end of 

 the table whilst I ate my own at the other. He 

 himself not only ate, but every few moments darted 

 off with some scrap for his mate nesting across the 

 field. Then back again in the apple tree above, with 

 a "Pink!" for more as he dropped to the table at 

 which I sat. 



Little need to speak for the Robin. He speaks 

 for himself a bird of strongly marked character and 

 intelligence, as bold as he is confiding. If man 

 cannot win his way back here, he may know that 

 fear of him is in the blood and the bone of a bird, 

 and that there is indeed an impassable gulf fixed, so 

 that one cannot go to the other. 



And of this Ringed Plover, what should one say ? 

 There he sits, some seven or eight feet from me, his 

 head turned so as to cover me with his left eye. He 

 is not flurried ; he is even comfortable under the 

 circumstances, as I can tell by the way he puffs out 

 his feathers now and again, and by the quaint, 

 drowsy manner in which he looks me up and down 

 from the corner of his eye. He is tired; he has 

 been in pain ; and perhaps this quiet monster on the 

 mud mound, himself something like mud in his 

 unsabbatical attire, is not the same who yesterday 



