g6 A MIDLAND VILLMIB : BAIliWAY AND WOODLAUD. 



remarkable point of difference. Apart from definite structural 

 characters, a very little observation will show that their habits 

 are in most respects alike. They all place their nests on the 

 ground; and they all walk, instead of hopping; the Larks 

 and the Pipits sing in the air, while the Pipits and the Wagtails 

 move their tails up and down in a peculiar manner. All are 

 earth-loving birds, except the Tree-pipit and the Woodlark. 



We may now leave the railway, and enter the woodland. 

 Most of the birds that dwell here have been already men- 

 tioned ; and I shall only mention in passing the Jays, the 

 Magpies, and the Crows, those mischievous and predatory 

 birds, which probably do more harm to the game in a 

 single week of April or May, than the beaulifml mice-eating 

 Kestrel does during the whole year. They all rob the nests 

 of the pheasants and partridges, both of eggs and young; 

 and when I saw one day in the wood the bodies of some twenty 

 robbers hung up on a branch, aU belonging to these tiffee 

 species, I could not but feel that justice had been done, for 

 it is not only game birds who are their victims. A large 

 increase of these three species would probably have a serious 

 result on the smaller winged population of a wood. 



Among the more interesting inhabitants of the wood, there 

 are two species which have not as yet been spoken of in 

 these chapters — ^the Grasshopper Warbler and the Nightingale. 

 The former has no right to be called a warbler, except in so 

 far as it belongs to one of those three families mentioned in 

 a former chapter, in which aU our British 'warblers' are now 

 included. It has no song, properly so called ; but no one who 



