THE BIRD OF THE BURNS 



THERE are some birds which associate themselves 

 so closely with certain scenery that it is impossible 

 to think of them apart from their setting. You 

 can think of a sparrow anywhere, and of a chaffinch 

 almost anywhere. The seagull looks about as 

 much at home at the plough tail as on the sea, 

 and the rook fits easily and familiarly into half 

 a dozen different situations. But the water ouzel 

 is a creature of a single environment, from which 

 it will not be divorced either in imagination or 

 reality. 



(When the days become warm and long a certain 

 kind of angler, who does not take himself in that 

 character too seriously, loves, above all things, to 

 wander to a hill burn and ply his line for trout, 

 which make up for not being very big by demand- 

 ing little in the way of artful alluring. But with 

 the hill -burn fisher trout are only a pretext. Con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, he is in love with the 

 burn and burn nature, and would find no sort of 

 compensation for it in more and bigger trout taken 

 from an artificial channel with nothing of the 

 burn's natural variety. He finds an exquisite 

 satisfaction looking into its deep, clear pools, 

 watching its swirling rush among the stones, in 



