CHAPTER XII 



Test and Itchen Vegetation Riverside villages The cottage by 

 the river Itchen valley Blossoming limes Bird visitors 

 Goldfinch Girl bunting Song Plumage Three common 

 river birds Coots Moor-hen and nest Little grebes' struggles 

 Male grebe's devotion Parent coot's wisdom A more or 

 less happy family Dogged little grebes Grebes training their 

 young Fishing birds and fascination. 



THEKE are no more refreshing places in Hampshire, 

 one might almost say in England, than the green level 

 valleys of the Test and Itchen that wind, alternately 

 widening and narrowing, through the downland country 

 to Southampton Water. Twin rivers they may be 

 called, flowing at no great distance apart through the 

 same kind of country, and closely alike in their 

 general features : land and water intermixed greenest 

 water-meadows and crystal currents that divide and 

 subdivide and join again, and again separate, forming 

 many a miniature island and long slip of wet meadow 

 with streams on either side. At all times refreshing 

 to the sight and pleasant to dwell by, they are best 



When it is summer and the green is deep. 



Greens of darkest bulrushes, tipped with bright brown 

 panicles, growing in masses where the water is wide 

 and shallowest; of grey-green graceful reeds, and of 



