180 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



the illusion. He was twisting with speed and cer- 

 tainty among the boles a foot or two above the floor, 

 more, indeed, like a furtive conspirator than as one at 

 home in his own place. But no conspirator could have 

 crept and curved among those trunks thus noiselessly 

 and with how sure a motion ! The wood-owl must, then, 

 possess some wonderfully delicate tactile or sensory 

 apparatus of nerves at the tips of the wings like 

 the bats for no bird of day could thus have flown 

 among those close-pent yews with such ease and 

 mastery. 



Grey wagtail, stock-dove and sparrow-hawk are none 

 of them common birds in this district, nor, indeed, 

 anywhere in England, except in a few favoured 

 localities, and the pleasure of seeing them is un- 

 common in proportion. The stock-dove is so much 

 akin in appearance to the wood-pigeon (the ornitho- 

 logical differences themselves are negligible the rarer 

 dove being a trifle smaller in size, without the white 

 collaret round the neck, and with an infusion of blue 

 run into the grey of the back. The song, too, is a 

 less continuous ripple of sound, the coo-oop being 

 strongly punctuated) that my sensations on the few 

 occasions when I met with it were but the professional 

 ones of adding a new species to my list. On the other 

 hand, I always knew where to find the grey wagtail 

 which runs goldfinch and bullfinch very close as our 

 loveliest small bird for a pair nested in the tangled 

 herbage by the watermill at the head of the pond. 

 The nest is well concealed and made of delicate root- 

 lets, grass and moss, lined with much hair and a few 

 feathers. The eggs (five in number) are greyish-white 

 mottled with brown. I remember one mild April day 

 in particular, when I saw the male in his first nuptial 

 colours, ebony cravat and all, standing on a leafless, 

 sapling ash with sulphur-yellow breast brighter than 

 the sunbeams playing on it. It gave a touch of 

 triumphant and almost fierce beauty to a weather 

 which had at last thrown off its roughness and finally 

 parted from its vagabond winter love. 



But an experience I had with a sparrow-hawk was 



