122 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



I sit in my study reviewing minor verse. The pied 

 wagtails depart for the nesting season and return again 

 after it, so that it is rare to hear their spring warble 

 delivered like that of pipits and wheatears, while 

 hovering some feet from the ground. But it is not 

 true to say that they do not sing in the winter, for 

 I sometimes used to hear their cheerful, hurried and 

 charming song, in the same notation as dunnock's 

 and swallow's, and uttered not in the air but on the 

 ground. I have never heard the mistle-thrush sing 

 in the winter, here or elsewhere, and it is my belief 

 that he is, like the blackbird, invariably a harbinger 

 of spring, the loud, ardent, assured and assertive 

 messenger of the first dawn, the early streaks — ^like 

 the daffodil. 



Except for swallows, martins and swifts, we see and 

 hear practically nothing of the migrants, though willow- 

 wren and chiff-chaff sometimes spend a few days in the 

 orchard before passing on, and cuckoos now and again 

 fly over the houses and fields. 



There are, however, exceptions. In June 1920 a 

 pair of yellow wagtails nested in some waste land, 

 tangled with oxeye daisies, parsley and mayweed, 

 between Snipe Field and Wheatear Field. Whenever 

 I approached the nest (once found, I kept some 

 distance away from it, for fear of attracting attention 

 to it) the birds would fly round my head in broad 

 sweeps, uttering their bright alarm cry — tihee, tihee — 

 trying to entice me away by manoeuvring in the 

 direction where I knew the nest was not. It is not 

 difficult to get near these shapely and brilliantly 

 plumaged birds, and they perch indiscriminately on 

 the ground, wagtail-fashion, on the tops of small 

 plants, chat-fashion, and on small trees and tall 

 bushes, finch-fashion, keeping their lustrous bodies 

 well out into the day. The voice is nearer to the 

 grey than the pied wagtail's, and the flight is all 

 curves and undulations. This symmetry of flowing 

 lines is deeply satisfying to the human eye. Nature 

 is a world of curves, as a great biologist says, and 

 we were brought up racially on them. Early in May 



