258 WAGTAILS AND PIPITS 



beside his hen, and such twitter, whether the true song or not, 

 heard amidst such surroundings, is pleasant enough to the lover of 

 solitude, though a reflection or two that cannot but occur, under the 

 circumstances, may, at the same time, sadden one who is also a 

 believer in peasant proprietorship. For myself, I see no mystery- 

 nothing that requires any special explanation in such arboreal 

 proclivities as may, at times, be shown by any of our Motacillince. 

 Neither in wagtail nor pipit has the occasional habit of perching by 

 any means been lost, and they are prepared to do so whenever it may 

 be at all convenient. 



Remarkable for his incipient parasitism, the pied-wagtail (to go 

 no farther) stands also convicted of another vagary, a revival, namely 

 I will not call it a " recrudescence " of the amatory and domestic 

 instincts, after the time in which these have had their legitimate 

 fulfilment has gone by when the nuptial plumage has been laid 

 aside, and that proper to the approaching winter assumed. Such 

 " latter-spring " activities, however, are by no means confined to the 

 bird in question, or to the group represented by it, but are practised, 

 occasionally, by many other species, belonging to families widely 

 separated both from it and from each other. After all, why should 

 this not be so ? It is not very wonderful, surely, that beings, compact 

 of so many and various energies, should sometimes push this or 

 that one of them beyond their ordinary confining channels. It would 

 be stranger, on the whole, if they did not, and perhaps it is strangest 

 of all that such forces, once kindled, should ever cease. Indeed, one 

 may almost ask, do they that is to say in every case ? How, unless 

 killed by their enemies or overtaken by some accident, do birds die ? 

 is a thought that has occurred to me, as it may have occurred to 

 others. Where are their dead bodies, not just a few of them, starved 

 or frozen during some exceptionally severe winter still less, one here 

 or there, beneath a window or telegraph wire, telling their stories 

 but those thousands, nay hundreds of thousands, which, if we think 

 of larks, starlings, wheatears, etc., should, on any ordinary theory 



