100 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



twitter like a wavelet or a vibration of ether or the 

 birds' own flight ; or erect on the tops of bushes and 

 pea and artichoke stalks, little shining green knights 

 with golden swords strapped to their thighs. Wagtails 

 are quite numerous, and so my walks over the same 

 ground were always insured against dullness. They 

 trod the dark ploughland with their mincing steps, 

 tossing their heads backwards and forwards like Indian 

 balancers, or took erratic wing to alight again with 

 a sudden switching off of the current of flight, turning 

 right about face. Here, too, they cultivated the 

 charming habit of perching and swaying on the tips 

 of the cabbage leaves. Wherever men worked in the 

 fields, these Robin Goodfellows came dancing down to 

 them, and to see birds in close touch with men, each 

 benefiting the other, is to me ever beautiful and 

 moving. I never saw them other than in pairs, 

 and often toying and sporting with their mates, 

 even in frosty weather. If the pairing instinct thus 

 survives the pairing season, as I have observed with 

 numerous species, it must be something more than 

 a pairing instinct. Human backs are expressive psycho- 

 logical indexes, but wagtails speak, argue, expostulate, 

 and declaim with their tails. Wrens, robins and thrushes 

 are fairly well distributed, but nothing is to be seen 

 in these parts of the autumnal migrations of the 

 younger robin generation, the country being far too 

 open for them, and the succulent smoking manure 

 heaps appealing more to starlings and finches. Still, 

 we have about a dozen residents. The pleasant 

 sparrow vespers to the declining sun are music that 

 London could ill spare. 



Omitting the gulls, our remaining large land birds 

 in the autumn are the mistle-thrush, kestrel, carrion crow 

 and wood-owl. 



The wood-owl is with us practically all the year 

 round, and probably nests in Richmond Park, for not 

 only does it nightly enliven the darkness with its 

 wind-in-the-chimney music, summer and winter, but 

 often brings young with it in the autumn, whose 

 hee-wick, hee-wick alternates with the deep, hollow notes 



