IO2 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



by the gardener before she had actually deposited her 

 egg ; and all might have gone well if a cat had not 

 strayed that way. That the Cuckoo should have 

 followed the birds into the greenhouse just at the time 

 when all was ripe for its mischief for there were 

 then four eggs in the nest seems to me to show that 

 it had been watching this pair of birds for some time ; 

 this the Wagtails well knew, and, abandoning perhaps 

 their original intention, chose this unlikely place. 



I think this must also be the explanation of that 

 curious fondness of this bird for railway stations, 

 which I have noticed not only in my own parish but in 

 all parts of the kingdom. When I say that almost 

 every country station has its pair, I am not going 

 very much beyond the facts. Here at Kingham it 

 has been so ever since I began to notice birds ; the 

 familiar little double note from the station roof is so 

 well known to me that I now barely stop to notice it. 

 At one time they used to build in the crevices of the 

 stacks of coal; this year there was a nest almost 

 under the signal-box, and just beneath the massive 

 wooden posts fixed at the end of a siding to resist the 

 force of shunted trucks. They are conspicuous birds, 

 and the Cuckoo would soon find them out if they 

 gave him a fair chance ; but the bustle of men and 

 trains perhaps deters the malignant enemy. 1 



1 I have somewhere read of a pair that built on the axle of a 

 shunted railway carriage on a branch line ; when the carriage was 



