8 Birds that come to our 



This brings me back to the subject of water- 

 wagtails. Motacilla lugubris, our familiar pied wagtail 

 — " lugubris " in point of comparative colouring only 

 — is, as I have said, one of the most confiding of Eng- 

 lish garden-birds. There are two pairs in our kitchen- 

 garden this year. In the fern-house, or rather in a 

 greenhouse, where the back wall is tapestried with 

 moss and maidenhair fern, one pair of these birds has 

 reared two broods. Entering through the half-opened 

 lights in the front or by the skylights of the roof, the 

 wagtails built their nest amongst the moss, where the 

 maidenhair depended and hid it from one's view. 

 When the gardeners syringed the ferns on a cloudless 

 day, the phenomenon of a sharp shower around the 

 nest must, could the birds have reasoned, have been a 

 remarkable one. But syringing and plucking the ferns 

 disturbed them in no way. 



The other pair of kitchen-garden wagtails were 

 still bolder. In a row of open low frames in which 

 plants are stored, the nest was built in the centre of 

 four miniature cross-roads where four flower-pots met. 

 Here the gardeners were constantly working, and the 

 wagtail on her nest was very evident to all to whom 

 she might be pointed out. And yet, in spite of such 

 an exposed site, one or two visitors had to look twice 

 before they discerned the bird, so beautifully did her 

 plumage assimilate itself with the groundwork of 

 scattered leaves and earth, amongst which she had 

 built. The bright, cheerful twittering song of the 

 pied wagtail is one of the first sounds that herald 

 in the early spring, and in March one watches the 



