128 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



grain of oatmeal to a twig of the plum-tree, there to 

 clutch it in his claw and tear it to pieces with his 

 bill like a hawk. Meanwhile shuffle-wing comes upon 

 the stage and makes a few shy pecks. But tomtit 

 reappears, and shuffle-wing at once gives place to him, 

 waiting in patience until the Blue Boy has finished his 

 inspection. 



On a bitter day early in February 1918 oxeye 

 astonished me by a nuptial dance on the fence, droop- 

 ing his wings, curling out and stiffening his feathers, 

 stretching his head out low (as a cow does to smell 

 the earth) and tramping down upon the wood in a 

 kind of prancing capriole delightful to the appraiiSing 

 taste of his lady sitting by. It is with birds in 

 love with their mates as with artists in love with 

 the world — ^they obey the law of making the most 

 and best of their material. The speed with which 

 these tits feed, their sudden pauses to look up, 

 round and ahead, the precision, energy, brilliance and 

 facility of their movements, the volatile change from 

 flight to bodily motion and again to flight all in one 

 unresting wave, like a seventeenth-century " heroic 

 pastoral," without end-stops or Ralph Hodgson's 

 Eve, bring it home to one at what high pressure 

 they live. 



In the late summer and early autumn a few young 

 birds drift through the gardens on their way to the 

 sea. I had never seen fly-catchers in London, until 

 one morning in July two young birds alighted on my 

 windowsill and there remained for ten minutes, lifting 

 beaks to the rain, as though it were larval or aphidian 

 manna dropped from the Celestial Bird-Mother. Their 

 mother in the flesh found them at length, and, scolding 

 them for thus exposing themselves, took them off with 

 her. A willow-wren with three young ^ remained for 

 a whole day in early August, and these casual visits 



1 Young willow-wrens are brighter than the parent birds, which 

 is an exception to the general rule that the young of a species 

 approximate to the ancestral form. The breasts of young robins 

 are spotted, one sign of relationship between the robin branch 

 of the warblers and the thrushes. 



