112 THE WATER-WAGTAILS, PIPITS AND TITS. 



notion of the way to be happy. And it is happy : the 

 vivacity and nimble eagerness of all its motions leave 

 no doubt about that. No other bird behaves in this 

 fashion. I feel sure that there must be some depart- 

 ment of insect life which other birds have missed, 

 or despised, atrl which the Wagtails have appropriat- 

 ed. There are green caterpillars on the tender shoots 

 and little birds to seek for them, there are grasshop- 

 pers in the grass and mynas to chevy them, there are 

 beetles and earwigs under the fallen leaves and bab- 

 blers to dislodge them, there are midges in the air and 

 swallows to hawk them, there are grubs in the rotten 

 bough and woodpeckers to dig them out ; but besides 

 all these it appears that there are minute winged things 

 on moist ground in great abundance, which rise like 

 snipe when startled, and these are the game of the 

 Water-wagtail. It runs and turns and twists and 

 leaps into the air, and you cannot see what it is after, 

 but you distinctly hear the snap of its little bill, like 

 the pop of a distant snipe-shooter's gun. It follows 

 the cattle in the pastures and runs in and out among 

 their feet ; they are its beaters, which drive the game 

 for it. Or it hunts by itself in cool places, on the 

 shady side of the house and wherever large trees keep 

 out the sun. 



I am thinking of the Grey Wagtail, which often 

 wanders far from water, but not from coolness and 

 shade. It is by far the commonest species we 

 have and a very familiar bird throughout the cold 

 weather. In the costume which it wears at that 

 season the upper parts are bluish-grey, but its fore- 

 head and whole face are white. On its breast there 

 is a black patch, exactly like a child's bib, and below 



