22 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



toads for which the line is a regular trap. They are 

 hatched out in thousands in some pond or ditch, and 

 when about an inch long try to migrate to the canal 

 or ponds on the other side of the line. There they 

 are stopped by the metals. If they can crawl over 

 the first line, they generally fail to manage the next, 

 and are there gobbled up by the carrion-crows by 

 dozens. The rooks are far more civilised, and con- 

 sequently bolder, than the crows. At the little country 

 stations they fly down after each train has passed and 

 hunt not only the line but the platform. The writer 

 saw a pair quietly searching for fragments of bread 

 and biscuit among the milk-cans on the platform of 

 a small station not two minutes after a train had left. 

 Railway cuttings are favourite haunts for very many 

 British birds and many of our smaller animals, just 

 as the slopes of embankments and cuttings are favourite 

 ground for certain flowers. The railway cutting is 

 as attractive a home as an old quarry when once the 

 creatures have learnt not to mind the trains, offering 

 much the same warm slope to the sun, shelter from 

 winds, and for the burrowing or hole-using creatures 

 a convenient " face " to work at. Sand-martins more 

 particularly haunt the cuttings, both to nest in and to 

 feed on the flies and gnats which gather there. Pipits, 

 larks, robins, whinchats, and other ground-building 

 birds nest on the embankments, and use the telegraph 

 wires as outlooks and resting-places. 



Rabbits, too, are especially fond of burrowing in 

 the cuttings, and pheasants like to sun themselves anc 

 hunt for ants' nests there. We have seen a cov( 



