Railway Birds and Flowers 129 



accelerated growth ; and by midsummer the ancient 

 pools have become a fastness of almost tropical 

 vegetation, where the enormous leaves of the 

 water-dock and deep groves of bulrushes and 

 sceptred irises conceal a wealth of multiplying 

 bird-life on every side. White- collared reed-bunt- 

 ings cling chirping to the swaying osiers above 

 their nests in the undergrowth on dry land ; the 

 inconsequent song of the sedge-warblers bubbles 

 from every belt of green, and the silvery chatter 

 of the reed-warblers flows unceasingly from the 

 high beds of cane-like reeds, to which they sling 

 their silky nests in the green twilight over the 

 water. Cuckoos regularly frequent these pools, 

 making the reed-warblers their special victims; 

 and all through the summer, from April to August, 

 in pools where there is any flow, dab-chicks are busy 

 hatching llong, chalky eggs in their water-logged 

 nests of weed. The taller bushes round the margin 

 of the pools are as full of the nesting-life of thrushes, 

 finches, and doves as the quaking reed-beds of the 

 notes of water-birds and warblers. In no other 

 inland spot can there be found such a concentration 

 of bird-life at the breeding season as in such tracts 

 of luxuriant fen ; and the very isolation and small- 

 ness of these railway pools make them even more 

 thickly populous than the wide expanses of similar 

 vegetation in the Norfolk Broad country, which in 

 character they closely recall. 



Wild flowers may seem to have but little place 

 among the familiar associations of a railway 

 9 



