i 4 8 SUMMER 



strayed from the nest is fascinating in its immature parti- 

 coloured suit ; though it has the blurred markings and rather 

 impure colours which are characteristic of all young birds. 

 The young blue and great tits are like smudged copies of the 

 adult birds, though the likeness does not bear exact compari- 

 son ; and young woodpeckers and kingfishers also wear the 

 bright colours of their clans. In a broad way we seem to see 

 here the working of a principle of natural selection, which 

 weeds out bright colours among the young hatched in more 

 exposed situations, and allows them finer development when 

 the little birds are nursed in sheltered holes. The same prin- 

 ciple roughly holds good of the hen birds. Hen torn- tits and 

 kingfishers and woodpeckers are nearly as bright as their 

 mates, but there is a great difference between the sexes of 

 blackbirds and pheasants. 



Young kingfishers appear from the nesting-holes at very 

 different dates during spring and summer, but most often 

 towards the end of June. They sit solemnly in a row on a 

 rail or outstretched bough by the waterside, and wait to be 

 fed with the same vacant self-absorption as the young robins 

 and thrushes in the shady garden shrubbery. All about 

 them in fine June weather the boughs and sedges of the 

 river teem with life. The air swarms with insects, and with 

 birds busily devouring them. Life and death jostle each 

 other with doubly concentrated fierceness at this time of 

 year. If happiness depended on length of days, it would be 

 a dark world for the majority of these young birds and 

 dancing flies ; but mankind is too apt to view nature by his 

 own standards, and to demand for all alike the fullness of 

 his threescore years and ten. The little kingfisher which 

 perishes in a rainstorm after a week of bright June weather 

 by the waterside is no fit object of pity because its day was 

 so brief. It saw the sun, and felt the stir of life, albeit per- 



