BIRD-HAUNTED LONDON 127 



Thrushes and blackbirds interrupt their feeding by 

 their wooing, and I have seen my golden-daggered 

 cock-blackbird chase his mate away from the garden, 

 she alighting on the fence, and he within a foot of 

 her, to swing up his tail in that slow, large 

 gesture like a fine line of blank verse, and thus 

 pursue her from fence to fence out of sight. It may 

 indeed be all dalliance, but there is no mistaking the 

 reluctance of his sooty brown mate. The hen black- 

 bird has just that undeveloped, indeterminate vesture 

 which fits the dusky raw material of bird-life in the 

 Cretaceous period. It is this kind of thing that makes 

 me feel the wonder of evolution — ^that the golden 

 oriole, both material and symbolic, is of the same 

 tribe as the hen blackbird. As colour is developed 

 from drab, so mind out of vague desires and gropings. 



Birds need water in the winter as much as they 

 need food, and I made a bath for them out of the 

 lid of the dustbin. The starlings who came to the 

 garden in daily troops of twenties and thirties are 

 adepts in it, gamboling in it, showering and disporting 

 themselves sometimes six at a time and sending the water 

 flying in all directions. The thrush is more demure, but 

 as he improves he must be anxious to learn the abandon 

 of the starlings. The blackbird I have never seen 

 dare the main, but tomtit and oxeye plunge starling- 

 wise and caper about like children in the sea. The 

 sparrows are learning by degrees. 



Wren and mistle-thrush are rarer visitors, and when 

 the latter does put in a very welcome appearance, it 

 is at twilight when the other birds have departed, to 

 indulge in a hearty and solitary bathe. It is remark- 

 able to see the wren at all in this hedgeless district, 

 but he does look me up now and again, and though 

 he will touch nothing of my varied fare, has come 

 within a couple of feet of my window, and sometimes 

 bathes, beating the water with his wings. I have had 

 as many as half a dozen blue-tits and four oxeyes in 

 it at one and the same time. Nothing comes amiss 

 to tomtit, and he will stand on the table sampling 

 one dish after another, to retire at last grasping a 



