HABITS OF YOUNG BEBDS. 87 



throats, and a dozen or two of other kinds, spend their whole 

 day here when the broods are reared. The Yellow Wagtails 

 are always conspicuous objects; not that they are brilliantly 

 coloured, for the young ones are mostly brown on the back, 

 and would hardly catch an inexperienced eye, but because of 

 the playfulness of their ways and their graceful wavy flight. 

 Young birds play just like kittens, or like the fox-cubs I once 

 caught playing in Daylesford wood at the mouth of their 

 earth, and watched for a long time as they rolled and tumbled 

 over each other. Only yesterday (July 15, 1885) I watched 

 a host of young wiUow-wrens, whitethroats, titmice, and others, 

 sporting with each other in a willow-coppice, and mixiiig 

 together without much reserve. Once I was taken aback by 

 the sight of two young buntings at play ; for a time they 

 quite deceived me by their agility, fluttering in the air like 

 linnets, unconscious that a single winter was to turn them 

 into burly and melancholy buntings. The student of birds 

 who sighs when the breeding-season is over and the familiar 

 voices are mute, is consoled by the sight of all these bright 

 young families, happy in youth, liberty, and abundance. His 

 knowledge too is immensely increased by the study of their 

 habits and appearance. His sense of the ludicrous is also 

 sometimes touched, as mine was yesterday when I went to see 

 how my young swallows were getting on under the roof of an 

 outhouse, and found them all sitting in a row on a rafter, like 

 school-children ; or when the young goldfinches in the chestnut 

 tree grew too big for their nest, but would persist in sitting 

 in it till they sat it all out of shape, and no one could make 



