A VILLAGE IN HAMPSHIRE 189 



To walk beside an English stream being one of the 

 choicest, is naturally one of the rarest of pleasures, and 

 no sooner was I strolling under the willows than an 

 angry game-keeper bore down on me. He drove on 

 like a sedge-warbler, though in a less agreeable voice, 

 but it was really the so much A B C of his profession, 

 for he soon came to see that I was a harmless dolt, 

 and promptly took me off to see a snipe's and a king- 

 fisher's nest a conduct which confounded me much 

 more than his railings. The former was a jerry-built 

 affair of grass-stems in a thick tussock of a rough field, 

 and the latter was an enormous hole in the roots of a 

 fallen beech projecting over the edge of the stream- 

 bank, and more appropriate to an otter than the 

 winged star with orange, azure and emerald lights, 

 who shoots rarely now along our English waters. 

 The kingfishers' burrows I have seen have been no 

 larger than a sand-martin's, and it is probable that the 

 kingfisher occasionally uses the discarded ones of this 

 martin. I watched for some time, but seeing nothing 

 but dragon-flies (Calopteryx virgo ?) winged pure tur- 

 quoise, moved on upstream, and a luxuriously tangled 

 Bower of Acrisia I found this river-valley deep wood 

 on one side, lushy meadows, osiers, alders and rushes 

 on the other ; water voles in the bank, water- 

 hens on the stream and silvery fish beneath it. 

 I found no reed-buntings, but in a tall reed-bed (a 

 foreign importation, rather like a thin bamboo with 

 the stalks banded green and brown at regular intervals) 

 I found a reed-warbler's nest with five young, warm, 

 pulsating, downy balls of life, the mandibles opening 

 to the touch of my finger by reflex action. 1 The nest 

 was a notable piece of architecture, deep, cup-shaped, 

 neatly slung seven feet from the ground, and woven 

 round the stalks with dry bents, moss and flowering 

 grasses, with a lining of horsehair and feathers. While 



1 This is one of the few obligatory movements of young birds. 

 Birds, being big-brained and educable, are not endowed at birth 

 with a heavy battery of reflexes and tropisms. They are ready- 

 made only in structure, and time bites upon them from the egg. 

 For the way chicks profit by experience, see Lloyd Morgan. 



