222 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



are working at the clover it is too silent ; so I think we 

 may begin our almanack with the house-fly and the moth 

 and the spider and the ant on the cucumber frame, and 

 so on, till, finally, the catalogue culminates with the 

 great yellow wasp. He is the final sign of summer ; 

 one swallow does not make it, one wasp does. He is a 

 connoisseur of the good things of the earth, and comes 

 not till their season. 



On the top of an old wall covered w^ith broad masses 

 of lichen, the patches of which grew out at their edges 

 as if a plate had taken to spreading at its rim, the tits 

 were much occupied in picking out minute insects ; the 

 wagtails came too, sparrows, robins, hedge-sparrows, and 

 occasionally a lark ; a bare blank wall to all appearance, 

 and the bare lichen as devoid of life to our eyes. Yet 

 there must have been something there for all these eager 

 bills — eggs or pupae. A jackdaw, with iron-grey patch 

 on the back of his broad poll, dropped in my garden 

 one morning, to the great alarm of the small birds, and 

 made off with some large dark object in his beak — some 

 beetle or shell probably, I could not distinguish which, 

 and should most likely have passed the spot without 

 seeing it. The sea-kale, which had been covered up 

 carefully with seaweed, to blanch and to protect it from 

 the frost, was attacked in the cold dry weather in a most 

 furious manner by blackbirds, thrushes, and starlings. 

 They tore away the seaweed with their strong bills, 

 pitching it right and left behind them in as workman- 

 like style as any miner, and so boring deep notches into 

 the edge of the bed. When a blackbird had made a 

 good hole he came back to visit it at various times of 

 the day, and kept a strict watch. If he found any 

 other blackbird or thrush infringing on his diggings, he 

 drove him away ferociously. Never were such works 



