THE WAGTAILS 257 



though recognising them, evidently, as choice preserves, they will 

 often leave them, to make sweeping darts over the surface of the 

 water, but just above it, and from bank to bank of the little pool, 

 catching as they go. Then, at last, when the light is so fading that he 

 too looks dusky, comes the kingfisher, again, and, perched upon a 

 willow bough, makes dart after dart, at intervals of a minute or so, 

 into the now intensely black water black as Styx itself. His eyes 

 are good enough, evidently, to see small fish beneath its surface, but 

 human ones cannot be certain whether he has caught one or not. 

 So, too, with the wagtails, they still continue to fly-catch, though they 

 are white-, not pied-wagtails now, for nothing black about them can 

 be seen ; and so, having begun to diminish, they soon cease altogether, 

 first one and then another vanishing "softly and silently," a yellow 

 one, amongst them, who receives some pecks from the others, being 

 the first to disappear but in all this no sound is uttered. 



Possibly, therefore, the little bands of yellow- wagtails a dozen to 

 a score that Boraston 1 has seen in autumn " in the tops of high 

 trees, by their excited flutterings and short flights exhibiting some 

 of the accompaniments of swarming in birds about to migrate," may 

 be exhibiting some of those of eating, also, for September, which I 

 think was the month, is not void of insects. It is not very easy to 

 see the connection between perching and migration, and in the 

 tree- and the meadow-pipit, who both perch, this instinct drives 

 them rather away from trees, and into the open country. Nor can 

 I agree with the same observant naturalist 2 (whose affirmative state- 

 ment is, indeed, a guarantee), that the perching of wagtails, in the 

 spring-time, has nothing to do with these birds' courting actions. As 

 has been seen, a descending flight which necessitates an elevation 

 to start from is a salient feature of these, and in the great lonely 

 rabbit-warrens of West Suffolk, amidst which I have lived, the top 

 twig of some solitary elder-bush may be made to answer this purpose. 

 From it I have watched the pied-wagtail sink, twittering, to the sand, 



1 Nature Tones and Undertones. ! Ibid. 



