128 Railway Birds and Flowers 



harsh, stammering call which can be heard time after 

 time through the noises proper to the train as it 

 sweeps over the level country between Slough and 

 Reading. When the smell of the beanflower and 

 the sound of the corn-bunting's " scrannel straw " 

 blow in together, the railway carriage is filled full 

 of the spirit of midsummer. 



The deepest and most secluded refuge of all those 

 which the railways have provided for the birds is 

 formed by the old abandoned ballast-pits which 

 were dug to provide material at the time of the 

 construction of the lines. They fringe the railway 

 here and there in various parts of the country where 

 more soil was required for raising embankments 

 than could be supplied from the excavated cut- 

 tings ; and they have remained for the greater 

 part of a century as deep and stagnant pools, half 

 choked with peaty vegetation, and overgrown with 

 a wealth of reeds, giant water-plants, and sheltering 

 scrub. In these ancient and undisturbed pools 

 bird-life runs riot through all the breeding season. 

 Early in April, long before the tardy water-vegetation 

 begins to shoot green among its russet swaths, the 

 coot and water-hen pile together their dry reed 

 nests, identical except for size ; and by the time 

 that the cuckoo is calling from the tasselled willows 

 and the sedge-warblers from overseas are chattering 

 once more in all the covert places of the pool, the 

 wary mothers are convoying their troops of newly 

 hatched fluff-balls among the still lagoons. Towards 

 the end of May the water-plants begin to transform 

 the rusty and down-beaten reed-beds with suddenly 



