

DECEMBER 



The Stoat and Willow Wren 



AS to weasels, my friend has never seen them 

 first lure and then grab a bird. Mostly 

 they hunt, he thinks, out of sight beneath 

 the ground, but he knows that they and stoats prey 

 much on feeble fledglings in spring and summer. 

 He believes a stoat, sometimes, at least, has power 

 to draw a small bird to its doom without troubling 

 even to juggle to it. He saw a stoat at the mouth 

 of its hole angling for an agitated willow wren which 

 was fluttering about the twigs just above. The 

 stoat popped half into the hole, chirped shrilly 

 again and again, and the willow wren came right 

 down. The stoat then seized the little thing, and 

 in an instant had it out of sight down the hole a 

 bird spirited away ! But it struck the spectator 

 that perhaps this willow wren came down to scold 

 or entice the evil intruder from her young some- 

 where hard by. The magnet of motherhood may 

 draw a bird to her fate more than any fascination 

 in the creature of prey. 



Mr. Philpott, of Little Marcle Rectory, also gave 

 me a very curious account of a weasel pantomime 

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