30 Spring on a Hill-stream 



of the summer warbler. The titmice are at home 

 in any weather ; but the slender willow-wren is 

 almost as pitiful a sight in a black squall of hail as 

 swallows in east wind and frost. Long-tailed tits 

 swing among the blossoms with their soft plumage 

 of pink and black and grey ; and now and then a 

 wren spins up from the lower bushes and hunts 

 fitfully for a few moments among the flowers. But 

 the wren is never at home very far from the ground ; 

 and soon it drops down again to the sycamore roots 

 that fringe the water, and slips to and fro in their 

 labyrinth in silent concentration, with an occasional 

 spurt of song. 



The water-ouzel, or dipper, is in shape like a 

 larger wren, and links it to the thrushes. It is as 

 characteristic a bird of the hill-streams as the 

 swallow of the farmyard or the gulls of the sea- 

 washed crags. It remains all winter on the stream, 

 and begins to nest long before many of the other 

 birds return. Its large, domed nest is often hidden 

 deep in a recess of the roots and rocks beside the 

 stream, or behind the dripping woodwork of a mill- 

 wheel. Sometimes it is fixed to a rock above the 

 water, hidden from the shore, but with no conceal- 

 ment on the side from which no enemy is expected. 

 Then, as the fisherman wades day by day past their 

 rock, the dippers' architecture can be watched 

 through all its stages. Sometimes the crust of 

 wet moss is fixed to the scantiest depression in the 

 rock, almost with the tenacity of the house-martin's 

 mud nest under the eaves. It grows from an oval 

 foundation, gradually raised and curved over until 



