22 FIELD-STUDIES OF RARER BIRDS 



be remembered that that term there might denote 

 desolation in most of England's counties. Occa- 

 sionally, however, the Pied Flycatcher forgets 

 its true love of the wild, not only to haunting the 

 pleasure-grounds of some stately country mansion, 

 but even to rearing its young in an artificial 

 nesting-box. 



Without being in any degree a water-dweller, 

 this little bird is, all the same, passionately 

 attached to the neighbourhood of water, and 

 especially to that of fast-flowing water ; nearly all its 

 haunts in Wales as elsewhere are the oak and 

 birch woods and coppices decking the rugged 

 sides of the valleys and dingles through which 

 turbulent salmon rivers and effervescent trout 

 streams boil madly along ; or the irregular array 

 of alders and birches fringing their banks, as 

 well as woodlands hanging above lakes. More 

 occasionally an orchard or fir plantation is 

 patronized, though rarely one far from water ; 

 while in one district on the Wye, which I know 

 well, the bird frequents the strips of covert dividing 

 the Cambrian Railway from the river, where it 

 may often be seen at rest on, or fly-catching from, 

 the telegraph wires. To sum up, it may fairly 

 be said that its summer home is seldom any 

 distance from a damp, not to say boggy, tract of 

 ground, close to water of some kind, and to rapid 

 streams in particular a peculiarity which may 

 perchance take origin from some special, aquatic 



