CHAPTER XIX 

 HEDGE-SPARROW 



THIS quiet, tame, sober-coloured little bird goes in the 

 Broadland by the name of the " Hatcher," perhaps because 

 he sometimes "hatches off" the lazy cuckoo's egg though 

 neither he nor his nest are favourites of the cuckoo. His 

 short robin-like song is one of the charming, hopeful voices 

 of early spring ; and when in February you see the cocks 

 chasing the hens across the marsh-grass, your heart is 

 delighted, for when the blue eggs by the hatcher are laid 

 the cuckoo will soon be over. 



Then day by day you see them lurking about the bare 

 hedgerows, working their half-spread wings in jerks, fol- 

 lowing each other. A little later after this courting chase 

 towards the end of March you may see the pairs feeding 

 together by some gorsy islet that rises from the marshland 

 that is their honeymoon. 



For soon the little nest is begun, for preference, in a 

 low gorse bush already breaking into bud, or in an " ivory 

 bush,"* or more rarely in old thorn faggots stowed by the 

 millman's door. Early in April the well-known little blue 

 eggs lie naked to the skies. And when the hen begins to 

 sit, if you chance to pass that way and flush her from her 

 nest, she full of deceit, like many " simple," homely folk- 

 will mayhap lie down on the road and spread out her tail, 

 or sit back on her spread tail with her partly spread wings 

 fluttering, pretending to be fatally ill or mortally wounded. 



* Ivy bush. 



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