A Pair of Squirrels. 161 



dart after a moth, but drop it again — as if they did 

 not care for that Ivind of food, and yet could not 

 resist the habit of snapping at such things. 



I once saw a flycatcher rush after a buff-colored 

 moth, which fluttered aimlessly out of a shady recess : 

 he snapped it, held it a second or two while hovering 

 in the air, and then let it go. Instantly a swallow 

 swooped down, caught the moth, and bore it thirty 

 or forty feet high, then dropped it, when, as the moth 

 came slowl}- down, another swallow seized it and car- 

 ried it some yards and then left hold, and the poor 

 creature after all went free. I have seen other in- 

 stances of swallows catching good-sized moths to let 

 them go again. 



The brown linnet is another regular visitor build- 

 ing in the orchard ; so too the blackcap, whose song, 

 though short, is sweet ; and the bold bright bull- 

 finches use the close-cropped hawthorn. They have 

 always a nest there made of slender fibres dexterously 

 interwoven. There is a group of elms near the further 

 end of the enclosure and another by the rickyard ; 

 linnets seem fond of elms. 



A pair of squirrels sometimes come down the same 

 hedge — it is a favorite highway of wild animals as 

 well as birds — to the orchard, and pla}' in the apple 

 trees : the}' even venture to a tree only a few jards 

 from the house. If not disturbed they stay a good 

 while, and then return by the way they came to a 

 copse at the top of the meadow. The corner formed 

 by the hedge and the copse — quiet, but in easy view 

 from the house — is especially frequented by them. 

 Their lively motions on the ground are very amusing : 

 they visit the ground much oftener than maj' be gen- 

 ii 



