72 BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



alive with the beautiful yellow birds, then a few days later 

 follow the hen birds, of soberer hue, possessing a greener 

 plumage and a more staid and less graceful demeanour than 

 their mates, as you may see later. They walk quickly along 

 the walls, darting at the flies rising from the steaming dung 

 left by the horses and cattle. With them may be seen at 

 times starlings and even herons. The yellow wagtail's soft 

 ching-t-u, ching-i-u a call indistinguishable from the voice of 

 the pied wagtail sounds sweetly amid the cries of the lambs. 

 Their courtship is brief and mysterious. You see pairs sitting 

 on the clumps of leafless bramble, on docks, and at times 

 on thistles, dear to the goldfinch, and, though a shyer bird 

 than the pied wagtail, they are by no means timid. 



In June, when the grass-marshes are yellow with crow's- 

 foot and red with ragged-robin, and the holls are decorated 

 with elegant masses of flowering hawthorn, the yellow wag- 

 tail begins to weave his grassy cradle on a mossy marsh 

 bottom near the water-side where the milk-white water-lilies 

 are just beginning to unfold their shapely cups amid the 

 smaller florets of Parnassian grass and the large-leaved 

 burdocks. The beautiful little couple will often choose, too, 

 a moist marsh, fragrant with mint, and pied with the tossing 

 plumes of cotton-grass. 



If you watch them building, you will see they have chosen 

 a " hill " * where there is a scant crop of pin-rush and chate. 

 There on the drier side they work a hollow with their claws 

 and breasts, a little cup-shaped snuggery, larger than a tit- 

 lark's cup, which they line with dry grass-stalks, but they do 

 not weave their cradles so closely as the titlark, nor yet are 

 their nests so symmetrical. The titlark is the more, metho- 

 dical architect, but the wagtail is the more finished artist. 

 Next to the grass he sometimes places a warm layer of 

 non-conducting wool, torn from his co-mates of the pasture, 

 whilst inside of this wool he weaves a lining of horse-hair 

 picked from the marsh-herds, crowning the work with a 



* A "hill " in Norfolk is a dry patch of very slightly elevated marsh. 



