18 BIRDS AND MAN 



of the same species of bird as it appeared at some 

 exceptionally favourable moment and was viewed 

 with pecuUar interest and pleasure. 



Of hundreds of such enduring images of our 

 commonest species I will here describe one before 

 concluding with this part of the subject. 



The long-tailed or bottle-tit is one of the 

 most delicately pretty of our small woodland 

 birds, and among my treasures, in my invisible and 

 intangible album, there were several pictures of 

 him which I had thought unsurpassable, until on 

 a day two years ago when a new and better one 

 was garnered. I was walking a few miles from 

 Bath by the Avon where it is not more than 

 thirty or forty yards wide, on a cold, windy, 

 very bright day in February. The opposite bank 

 was lined with bushes growing close to the water, 

 the roots and lower trunks of many of them 

 being submerged, as the river was very full ; and 

 behind this low growth the ground rose abruptly, 

 forming a long green hill crowned with tall 

 beeches. I stopped to admire one of the bushes 

 across the stream, and I wish I could now say 

 what its species was : it was low with widespread 

 branches close to the surface of the water, and 



