112 CASUALS IN THE CAUCASUS 



of his tail and sideway glance giving out, like Simon 

 Magus, " that himself is some great one." 



This routing out of flabby monsters was to him as 

 the stalking of big game to the shikari. 



The Lucullus banquet attracted a group of chaf- 

 finches, a covey of admiring feminines in sombre garb 

 surrounding a beautiful male in his gayest coat. There 

 are few birds so attractive as he ! And here, in far 

 Caucasia, he was forgetting his Latin name of Coelebs, 

 and had christened himself Benedick, Mormon Bene- 

 dick ! 



It is curious to see so many English birds. Some 

 are spring visitors, going northwards and westwards to 

 their breeding haunts, and returning south in autumn 

 to winter quarters, but numbers of them remain 

 throughout the winter. Somehow one expects to find 

 a rara avis in every bush, instead — familiar friends, 

 friends and more friends. The willow wren, with 

 his soft silvery song, haunts the wooded mountain 

 slopes, and the yellowhammer sits on the telegraph 

 wires along the Tiflis-Vladikavkaz road, singing plain- 

 tively for his supper as with us. Thrushes live in all 

 the woods to a considerable height above sea-level, 

 and down many a forest path I found the little tell-tale 

 heaps of snail-shell debris surrounding the stone on 

 whose sharp anvil the birds battered their victims. 



Ali Ghirik did not take much interest in ornithology, 

 and only respected the eagle, orla, and that because of 

 its commanding size and courage. He told me, when 

 I asked him, that all the birds, even the casuals, sing 

 their songs in Russian now. 



