THE WAGTAILS 247 



From what I have seen, it appears to me that the motion is so quick, 

 and the mandibles opened so slightly, that there is no time for any 

 of the heap to escape supposing any to be capable of attempting 

 it or even to become displaced. For the fraction of a second the 

 compressing power is but slightly relaxed, during which brief interval 

 another living speck is added, and so on. Occasionally, indeed, a 

 body from one of the projecting margins will drop upon the ground, 

 and is then instantly picked up again, in what seems to be a quite 

 ordinary manner. Once I have seen a bird after thus collecting flies, 

 for some time, apparently for the young, close at hand, drop the 

 whole heap on the ground, and commence eating them, none being 

 either sufficiently quick, or sufficiently intact, to get away. This may 

 have been the male not nearly so good a caterer and we perhaps 

 see in such an act a conflict between parental instinct and keen 

 personal appetite. 



It is always in this way, and never with one insect, brought at 

 a time, that I have seen young wagtails fed, and the same method 

 is employed after they have left the nest. This can be most pleasingly 

 witnessed with the grey-wagtail, as this bird one of the most brightly 

 beautiful that we possess has been foolishly called (lugvhris being 

 about as happy for its brisk, lively relative). It is entrancing to 

 watch a pair of these sylph-like beings, about some rock- and boulder- 

 strewn stream, whose banks, in places, make miniature precipices, 

 from the height of which the water tumbles, to foam and swirl a little, 

 till, having swept round a bend, it flows swiftly away, in broad, full 

 volume, just curling, crestless, over smooth, flat stones that gleam, 

 golden-brown, in the sunbeams. Here, in some nook or angle, under 

 the shade of forest trees, very often for hill, stream, and woodland 

 touch hands in these paradises one may sit and see such grace, 

 beauty, and activity conjoined, as never yet swayed in a ball-room 

 or panted on a pantomime stage. Sometimes the birds, in their 

 uniformly successful pursuit of the insects which fill the air, will turn 

 almost, if not entirely, over in it, losing, as if for sport, their centre 



