BIBDS IN A VILLAGE. 
37 
quaint and beautiful wryneck ? There are few 
British birds, perhaps not one — not even the crafty 
black and white magpie, or mysterious moth-like 
goat-sucker, or tropical kingfisher — more interest- 
ing to watch. At twilight I had lingered at the 
woodside, also in other likely places, and the goat- 
sucker had failed to appear, gliding and zig- 
zagging hither and thither on his dusky-mottled 
noiseless wings, and now this still heavier dis- 
appointment was mine. I could not find the wry- 
neck. Those quiet grassy orchards, shut in by 
straggling hedges, should have had him as a 
favoured summer guest. Creeper and nuthatch, 
and starling and gem -like blue- tit, found holes 
enough in the old trunks to breed in. And yet I 
knew that, albeit not common, he was there ; I 
could not exactly say where, but somewhere on the 
other side of the next hedge or field or orchard ; 
for I heard his unmistakable cry, now on this 
hand, now on that. Day after day I followed the 
voice, sometimes in my eagerness forcing my way 
through a brambly hedge to emerge so scratched 
and with clothes torn as if I had been set upon and 
mauled by some savage animal of the cat kind; 
and still the quaint figure eluded my vision. 
At last I began to have doubts about the creature 
that emitted that strange penetrating call. First 
heard as a bird-call, and nothing more, by degrees 
