202 BIRD WATCHING 



that they think you anywhere rather than where you 

 are ! It is like eavesdropping, it hardly seems right. 

 Now the nearest greenfinch picks out an ear of the 

 corn and, as if to show you just how he does it, comes 

 even a thought nearer. He turns it till it is crosswise 

 in his beak, snips off the stalk, rapidly divests it of 

 what remains of the outer huskiness — in doing which 

 you see him work his mandibles in a delicate, tactile 

 manner — and swallows the inner essence. Through- 

 out he does not help himself with his claws at all. It 

 is pleasant to see this, but still more so to have so 

 many little dicky birds just within a pace or two, all 

 free and unconstrained and knowing nothing whatever 

 about it. It is as if you had somehow got into a 

 bird-cage without alarming the inmates, but even as 

 this occurs to you you recognise the poverty of the 

 simile, and rejoice to be in nature's aviary — at least 

 one may say this of the birds if not of the straw- 

 stack. 



There is now, besides chaiifinches and greenfinches, 

 which form the great bulk of the numbers, quite a 

 little crowd of bramblings— twenty or more — their 

 beautiful ^Id-russet plumage gleaming out in an 

 easy pre-eminence of colour ; for they are, indeed, much 

 handsomer than the handsomest cock chaffinch or 

 greenfinch, and as both the sexes are alike, nothing 

 of them is lost, there are no dead-weights. Even the 

 yellow-hammers when at their yellowest cannot com- 

 pete with these chestnut beauties, and the pretty little 

 blue-tits who feed softly — two or three together — on 

 the poppy seeds are beaten, whether they confess it or 

 not. A hedge-sparrow or two hopping very quietly 

 and unobtrusively about on the outskirts of the great 



