106 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



exactly as I have related it, and I believe it is worth 

 relating, since I have never before seen so remarkable 

 an example of intelligent co-operation among birds, 

 following upon a deliberate summons for assistance. 

 Whether other people take any notice of our crows, I 

 do not know, but for the constant refreshment they 

 have given me I am truly grateful to them. 1 



On an iron-bound day early in February 1919, 

 with flakes of snow hurling almost horizontally past 

 me, I met with two pairs of grey wagtails, the first 

 time I had seen them in London, looking like strayed 

 wanderers from some brighter world in their exquisite 

 grey and yellow feathers, ruffled in the bitter wind. 

 This wagtail turned up again next winter, and this 

 time a mile nearer in. I saw one running and feeding 

 along the embankment on December 22nd, and four 

 days later close to the same place, but flying over 

 the fields. He has the true wagtailian double note, 

 but it is not so thick and sibilant altogether brighter 

 and more abrupt. On January 14th I was so for- 

 tunate as to meet the grey in the fields in company 

 with pipits and a pair of pied wagtails, and I had 

 a rare opportunity of comparing their notes. When 

 they are heard together the difference is marked, and 

 the grey's twice and sharply struck bell, pure in in- 

 tonation, is much superior in quality to the more 

 relaxed and consonantal note of the pied. They differ 

 as the duskiness of the one bird differs from the un- 

 compromised grey and yellow of the other. It gives 

 one a rich sense of the artistic progress of evolution to 

 reflect that pipit and grey wagtail both are descended 

 from a generalized type as dull in colouring as the 

 pipits. From it arose the sylph-like Motacillidce, as 

 the Ancient Mariner arose like Aphrodite from the sun- 

 less expanse of Shelvocke's voyages. Thus nature plays 

 her endless variations upon her plain and single theme 

 of praise, a Cecilia, with her eyes fixed on the courts of 

 heaven. 



1 One of the briskest and most intimate accounts of crows I 

 know is in Lieut. -Colonel Cunningham's Some Indian Friends 

 and Acquaintances. 



