Birds-Nesting 



a few pipes daily, and unconsciously assimilating the 

 beauty of bright daisy-sprinkled grass, where the 

 lambs are at frolic, and the budding trees and spring- 

 ing grass, the twitter of birds, and the brook's eternal 

 song you will see a brown bird come, his head 

 thrown well back on his shoulders, and with the easy 

 flight of a hawk, and till his joyous call floats out in 

 the warm spring air you hardly realise that it is the 

 first cuckoo. Every day he gets new companions, 

 and you make a careful inventory of the homes on 

 view in order to see what husbands are to be duped 

 by this winged Lothario. In the crevice of the dry 

 bank a water-wagtail, whose little flights and runs 

 and flutterings on the close-cropped grass and among 

 the cows and sheep have been part of the place's life, 

 has made a warm, snug nest of moss and bent. One 

 day you find added to the four speckled eggs already 

 there another and a bigger one resembling (as they 

 do) the house-sparrow's, but a size larger than these, 

 and therefrom there issues a ' gowk ' that grows at a 

 pace bewildering to the putative parents. Many 

 other happy households the hedge-sparrow's, the 

 lark's, the meadow-pipit's, even the blackbird's 

 invite the rascal's intrusion : but here he seems to 

 take a peculiar joy in teasing the wagtail. In the 

 wood on the hill there is another tiny home he loves 

 to desecrate. It is built on the side of an ash-bole, 

 and is most difficult to find. But the father, out of 

 the very force of his loving anxiety, tells the seeker 



