16 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



finny creatures that he preys upon, seems a large 

 assumption. 



TENANTS OF THE DYKE. 



To the shallow dyke where our last otter died, 

 where moorhens paddle and dabchicks are sometimes 

 surprised, greenfinches come in the winter for the 

 food which they alone of birds seem able to extract 

 from the withered bur-reeds, and goldfinches flutter 

 like butterflies along the banks where last year's dead 

 and broken thistles still hold some seeds for sharp 

 eyes and needle beaks. The snipe is always there in 

 hard weather, too, lurking under the bank ; for the 

 ice always falls away a little from high-water mark, 

 leaving just an inch or so of exposed mud, where the 

 snipe's long, nerve-tipped bill can feel about for 

 worms. Here comes the wren, too, itself almost a 

 little bunched-up snipe ; and the starlings scramble 

 up and down the bank, poking their bills wherever 

 they can enter. The blackbird and the robin hunt 

 along the banks, too, quite as earnestly, if with less 

 fuss, than the starlings ; for wherever land and water 

 join there is always a margin where lie the corpses of 

 things that belonged to one element and died in the 

 other ; and wherever there are corpses there is food. 



A CONTRAST IN CONDUCT. 



But the community of interest which brings robin 

 and blackbird together wherever Nature spreads her 

 life and death is not more marked than the diversity 

 of their conduct where man is concerned. I came 

 down to the dyke the other morning, and as I 



