14 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



twos and threes, from all points of the compass. Finally, 

 twenty-three had assembled, and with their long tails 

 fanned, they began to gambol about the rock-face, chasing 

 one another up and down and to and fro, occasionally 

 alighting on the summit, and then flinging themselves 

 overboard with a gaiety and abandon of spirits that 

 made me wish for a metamorphosis into their form. 

 They looked like enormous, long-tailed, pied butterflies, 

 flickering about a sunny wall (for the sun's level rays 

 were caught upon the rocks), and when they were at 

 rest (as happened rarely) like rows of guillemots on the 

 ledges of sea-cliffs. Then the congregation gradually 

 dispersed, the pleasure party was over, and in the gathering 

 darkness the three buzzards, who lived in the neighbour- 

 hood, were circling on motionless pinions above the ancient 

 crown of the rock pavilion. It would not, perhaps, be 

 altogether fantastic to see in this rendezvousing for evening 

 entertainments a tradition of the magpie tribe, broken 

 elsewhere, but preserved in its continuity in a place where 

 the larger birds are still permitted to exist, for even 

 curlew put aside their wildness here, and stalked the 

 field next to my cottage like turkeys, curlew which else- 

 where are, to us, but the disembodied voices of mystery 

 and remoteness. 1 



The magpies remind me of the pied wagtails, which are 

 a duodecimo edition of them in colouring, and volatile, 

 inconsequent nature. A flock of over forty used to 

 roost in the tall bracken thirty feet away from the house, 

 and here, too, there was ceremony. They took about 

 three-quarters of an hour every evening to settle down ; 

 first sibilating and prancing round in the air in their 

 helter-skelter manner, like leaves whirled by contrary 

 gusts, swooping and dipping about, until, one by one, 

 they came down upon the tips of the bracken. Then 

 up they rose, flew about like mad, and darted down upon 



1 Many more weeks of observation that I was able to afford 

 would be necessary to discover whether these parties were a regular 

 feature of magpie life in this district. But I am sure it could not 

 have been a chance gathering, for the birds lived in pairs and 

 small family parties over the country, each pair or group, so far 

 as I could see, living in a more or less definite area. 



