V A Chapter on Wagtails 1 1 3 



saw both cock and hen stand up to Billy in such a 

 ludicrously determined way, — the cock in front as if 

 to protect his wife, — that I stopped the dog with 

 a sign, and the big and little animals continued to 

 regard each other on equal terms, until my irre- 

 pressible laughter sent the Wagtails off. 



When the young are able to fly, I know no more 

 beautiful sight than to watch them playing in a hay- 

 field. True, they are not of the bright yellow their 

 parents wear, — they are often almost wholly brown, 

 though they differ considerably from each other; 

 but their movements in the air it is a constant 

 pleasure to watch. They dance and spring and twist 

 and turn, — now they are on the ground, now high in 

 air, now at the other end of the field, and now as 

 suddenly back again. Nor do they limit themselves 

 to the hay-fields, or to the pastures where they run 

 about among the legs of the grazing cattle. I have 

 repeatedly seen them in osier-beds, on telegraph 

 wires, on the top branches of high trees, and in corn- 

 fields, perching on the ears of wheat. So light and 

 sylph -like are they that the stalks were hardly 

 bent beneath their weight; and I could not help 

 singling out one of these on which a bird had been 

 resting, and trying to measure with the touch of my 

 finger the weight of that fairy figure. Another day 

 I watched a family perched upon the telegraph 

 wires ; they let me come close underneath them, and 



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