i68 
NATURE NOTES 
and bleak. Master kingfisher also sees them, and like an arrow 
he darts into the water, and emerges a moment later with a 
half-inch fish transfixed on his pointed shapely bill. To my 
regret the beautiful bird does not return to the willow bough, but 
like a flash of blue lightning he flies along the bank carrying 
his catch crosswise in his bill. 
I was told by the assistant lock-keeper that three pairs of 
kingfishers used to build annually in the banks of Ash Island ; 
but, alas, before the Thames Conservancy put a stop to shooting 
on the Thames, the cockney sportsman waged such inveterate 
war against the birds on this part of the river that I fear it 
would prove a difficult matter to find three pairs of kingfishers 
between Sunbury and Molesey Locks nowadays. A pair of 
long-tail titmice next pay a visit to my willow, and with merry 
twitterings hunt amongst the crevices of the bark for the insect 
life harbouring therein. A few minutes later three blue tits join 
their small and more soberly plumaged cousins, and they also 
begin to search every nook and cranny for flies, beetles, larvae, 
&c., now spinning round a decaying branch, and now crawling 
along the trunk, head foremost or downmost as fancy guides 
them. They are male and female, and it is delightful to watch 
the cock bird feeding the hen with all the choicest morsels he 
can find, and as he gently places a fat scolytus beetle or grub in 
her beak she bows her pretty little head as though to thank him 
for his affectionate and unselfish attentions. The “ long bobs ” 
and blue tits at length wing away to another happy hunting 
ground, and for a time I am left in solitude, but my attention is 
suddenly attracted by a small dark brown animal creeping along 
the bank on the opposite side of the water. The little creature 
has a round, blunt head, very much like that of a miniature 
beaver, and a white-tipped tail of about half the length of that of 
the common or Norwegian rat. He is a water-vole, and not, as 
he is commonly called, a water -rat, and lives entirely upon vege- 
table food : indeed, as I write he is nibbling away at the white 
succulent part of a kind of bulrush, which he daintily holds 
between his fore-paws. The water-vole is, in my humble 
opinion, a great feature in our English rivers and streams, and 
it seems a thousand pities that the average water-bailiff and 
game-keeper cannot, or will not, learn that the vole is purely 
and simply an herbivorous animal, and does absolutely no harm 
to either fish spawn or game eggs. As I sit smoking and watch- 
ing the rodent at his evening meal, the sweet song of a reed- 
warbler gladdens my ears, and peeping into a thorn-bush near at 
hand I can plainly see the delicate-looking little bird pouring out 
his love song while his mate sits on the same twig within a few 
yards of him preening her feathers in the most unconcerned 
manner possible, like the little coquette she is. 
The song of the reed warbler ceases abruptly, and the 
water-vole drops his bulrush salad and takes a “ header” into 
the stream. For a moment I imagine some movement on my 
