A CITY OF BIRDS 63 



A red-backed shrike had his pitch near the town, 

 and was generally to be found perched boldly on the 

 topmost twig of a hedgerow hawthorn near a wood, 

 swaying in the wind and turning his alert little head 

 to all the points of the compass. Then he would 

 suddenly drop down from his perch in the manner of 

 the fly-catcher and hurl himself upon a crane-fly on the 

 top of the meadow-grasses and then back again, the 

 robber baron surveying the countryside from the look- 

 out of his stronghold. I never found his skewered 

 larder. But charming bird as he is in his soft grey, 

 cream and chestnut livery, with a conspicuous black 

 stripe (like a pirate flag) over his eye, he looks all 

 the bold, bad villain of the piece. So confident, even 

 disdainful was my bird, that he allowed me to creep within 

 half a dozen yards of him with very little trouble. 



Indeed, the one defect of this bird-showered land was 

 that there were no nightingales. According to the tales 

 of town and village they swarmed, and I frequently had 

 their songs pointed out to me by local experts. But 

 that year they were all temporarily occupying the forms 

 of robins, wrens and thrushes.^ But the bird-watcher 

 does not hope over much, for being wise in his generation 

 he lives upon things not expected, knowing that if he 

 miss something for which he looked, he will be com- 

 pensated by something out of range of his hope. One day 

 I was trying to fit a pied bird-form to the loud double chuck 

 of a greater spotted woodpecker in front of me, when 

 happening to look downwards to see where I was going, I 

 saw a swallow sitting in the road, not injured, for presently 

 it got up and flew away, to return and sit down again in 

 the same place. Here was a problem, for the swallow was 

 not dusting. Was it, perhaps, a female and egg-bound, or 

 caught away from the nest by a desire to lay ? 



Occupied with this queer conduct, I came homewards, 

 passing the swallows swooping down to bathe in the 

 moat and then up again, shaking themselves in the 

 air ; watching the swifts tearing and screaming round 



1 The following year, I heard one in a small copse half a mile 

 from the town. He was a very inferior performer, the poorest 

 I have ever heard. 



