180 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



the illusion. He was twisting with speed and cer- 

 tainty among the boles a foot or two above the floor, 

 more, indeed, like a furtive conspirator than as one at 

 home in his own place. But no conspirator could have 

 crept and curved among those trunks thus noiselessly 

 and with how sure a motion ! The wood-owl must, then, 

 possess some wonderfully delicate tactile or sensory 

 apparatus of nerves at the tips of the wings — like 

 the bats — for no bird of day could thus have flown 

 among those close-pent yews with such ease and 

 mastery. 



Grey wagtail, stock-dove and sparrow-hawk are none 

 of them common birds in this district, nor, indeed, 

 anywhere in England, except in a few favoured 

 localities, and the pleasure of seeing them is un- 

 common in proportion. The stock-dove is so much 

 akin in appearance to the wood-pigeon (the ornitho- 

 logical differences themselves are negligible — the rarer 

 dove being a trifle smaller in size, without the white 

 collaret round the neck, and with an infusion of blue 

 run into the grey of the back. The song, too, is a 

 less continuous ripple of sound, the coo-oop being 

 strongly punctuated) that my sensations on the few 

 occasions when I met with it were but the professional 

 ones of adding a new species to my list. On the other 

 hand, I always knew where to find the grey wagtail — 

 which runs goldfinch and bullfinch very close as our 

 loveliest small bird — for a pair nested in the tangled 

 herbage by the watermill at the head of the pond. 

 The nest is well concealed and made of delicate root- 

 lets, grass and moss, lined with much hair and a few 

 feathers. The eggs (five in number) are greyish-white 

 mottled with brown. I remember one mild April day 

 in particular, when I saw the male in his first nuptial 

 colours, ebony cravat and all, standing on a leafiess, 

 sapling ash with sulphur-yellow breast brighter than 

 the sunbeams playing on it. It gave a touch of 

 triumphant and almost fierce beauty to a weather 

 which had at last thrown off its roughness and finally 

 parted from its vagabond winter love. 



But an experience I had with a sparrow-hawk was 



