56 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



science should make one wary of the hand-book. Thus 

 I watched a willow-wren building his nest on the top 

 of the magnificent old wall surrounding the bishop's 

 palace, all festooned with plum, cherry and peach blossom, 

 as if he were doing the most natural thing in the world, 

 and not (as he was) violating ornithological propriety. 



In or near the garden itself, surrounded by a moat 

 and forming with its wall an annexe to the cathedral 

 buildings — ^redstart, blackcap, garden warbler, willow- 

 wren, chiff-chaff, wren, robin, spotted fly-catcher, tree- 

 creeper, pied wagtail, greenfinch and chaffinch all nested, 

 while just outside, the grey wagtail, the pearl-grey and 

 sulphur-yellow Ariel of the moorland stream hatched 

 and reared a party of young. 



One day I went off birds-nesting among the pastures 

 and woods that frame the town, and in an hour I found 

 a blackbird's nest in a copse with four eggs, a wren's 

 in a faggot of wood with five (when I returned in the 

 autumn I found the faggots gone — ^what should I feel 

 like if a giant hand came down upon my home and, 

 regardless of my cries, wrenched it from the ground, 

 carried it off, broke it up and cast it with all its inmates 

 into some gigantic furnace ? But perhaps the httle 

 wrens took the hedges in time), a starling's and a 

 yaffle's in the trunk of the same tall birch, a blue tit's 

 in an oak, a crow's (positively a crow's, the most 

 persecuted bird in England) with four young on the top 

 of a hedgerow elm, and another blackbird's in the fork of 

 a thorn on the banks of the stream a mile from the town. 



The hen-bird of this nest was sitting, and with perfect 

 devotion and gallantry never moved except to turn 

 her anguished eyes from the wide fields, the flowing 

 water and the sprawling hedges, symbols of freedom, 

 of security, of life itself, to me peering at her not six 

 inches from her bill. This was a surprise to me, for 

 the blackie, the Miss Bates of bird society and the 

 least intelligent of the thrushes, usually betrays the 

 nest by flustered exit and loud alarm-cry more readily 

 almost than any other bird. Now, it happened that 

 the dusky brown of the bird harmonized so well with 

 the dim, neutral tints of her home, and the nest was 



