A Lucky Moth 147 



not care for that kind of food, and yet could not resist the 

 habit of snapping at such things. 



I once saw a flycatcher rush after a buff-coloured moth, 

 which fluttered aimlessly out of a shady recess : he snapped 

 it, held it a second or two while hovering in the air, and 

 then let it go. Instantly a swallow swooped down, caught 

 the moth, and bore it thirty or forty feet high, then dropped 

 it, when, as the moth came slowly down, another swallow 

 seized it and carried it some yards and then left hold, and 

 the poor creature after all went free. I have seen other 

 instances of swallows catching good-sized moths to let 

 them go again. 



The brown linnet is another regular visitor building 

 in the orchard ; so too the blackcap, whose song, though 

 short, is sweet ; and the bold bright bullfinches use the 

 close-cropped hawthorn. They have always a nest there, 

 made of slender fibres dexterously interwoven. There is 

 a group of ekns near the further end of the enclosure, and 

 another by the rickyard ; linnets seem fond of elms. 



A pair of squirrels sometimes come down the same 

 hedge — it is a favourite highway of wild animals as well 

 as birds — to the orchard, and play in the apple trees . 

 they even venture to a tree only a few yards from the 

 house. If not disturbed they stay a good while, and then 

 return by the way they came to a copse at the top of the 

 meadow. The corner formed by the hedge and the copse — 

 quiet, but in easy view from the house — is especially fre- 

 quented by them. Their lively motions on the ground 

 are very amusing ; they visit the ground much oftener 

 than may be generally supposed. Fir trees seem to attract 

 them — where there is a plantation of firs you may be sure 

 of finding a squirrel. 



When alarmed or chased a squirrel always ascends the 



l2 



