Feathered Travellers' Leafy Capital 143 



happy the goldfinches are in the orchard. Summer after 

 summer they build in the same trees — bushy-headed cod- 

 lings ; generation after generation has been born there and 

 gone forth to enjoy in turn the pleasures of the field. 



A year — nay, a single summer — must be a long time in 

 their chronology, for they are so very very busy : a bright 

 sunshiny day must be like a month to them. Now coquet- 

 ting, now splashing at the sandy edge of a shallow streamlet 

 till the golden feathers glisten from the water and the red 

 topknot shines, away again along the hedgerow searching for 

 seeds, singing all the while, and the tiny heart beating so 

 rapidly as to compress twice as many beats of emotion into 

 the minute as our sluggish organisations are capable of. 

 Though a path much frequented by the household passes 

 beneath the trees in which they build, they show no fear. 



Just as men from various causes congregate in particular 

 places, so there are spots in the fields — in the country gene- 

 rally — which appear to specially attract birds of all kinds. 

 Wide districts are almost bare of them : on a single farm 

 you may often find a great meadow which scarcely seems to 

 have a bird in it, while another little oddly-cornered field 

 is populous with them. This orchard and garden at Wick 

 is one of the favourite places. It is like one of those 

 Eastern marts where men of fifty different nationalities, and 

 picturesquely clad, jostle each other in the bazaars : so 

 here feathered travellers of every species have a kind of 

 leafy capital. When the nesting time is over the gold- 

 finches quit the orchard, and only return for a brief call 

 now and then. I almost think the finches have got regular 

 caravan routes round and across the fields which they travel 

 in small bands. 



In the meadow, just without the close-cropped hawthorn 

 which encloses one side of the orchard, is a thick hedge> 



