A Pair of Squirrels. 161 



dart after a moth, but drop it again as if they did 

 not care for that kind of food, and 3 r et could not 

 resist the habit of snapping at such things. 



I once saw a flycatcher rush after a buff-colored 

 moth, which fluttered aimlessly out of a shady recess : 

 he snapped it, held it a second or two while hovering 

 in the air, and then let it go. Instantly a swallow 

 swooped down, caught the moth, and bore it thirty 

 or forty feet high, then dropped it, when, as the moth 

 came slowly down, another swallow seized it and car- 

 ried it some yards and then left hold, and the poor 

 creature after all went free. I have seen other in- 

 stances of swallows catching good-sized moths to let 

 them go again. 



The brown linnet is another regular visitor build- 

 ing in the orchard ; so too the blackcap, whose song, 

 though short, is sweet ; and the bold bright bull- 

 finches use the close-cropped hawthorn. They have 

 always a nest there made of slender fibres dexterously 

 interwoven. There is a group of elms near the further 

 end of the enclosure and another by the rickyard ; 

 linnets seem fond of elms. 



A pair of squirrels sometimes come down the same 

 hedge it is a favorite highway of wild animals as 

 well as birds to the orchard, and play in the apple 

 trees : they even venture to a tree only a few yards 

 from the house. If not disturbed they stay a good 

 while, and then return by the way they came to a 

 copse at the top of the meadow. The corner formed 

 by the hedge and the copse quiet, but in easy view 

 from the house is especially frequented by them. 

 Their lively motions on the ground are very amusing : 

 they visit the ground much oftener than may be gen- 

 ii 



