Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/315

Rh surroundings. Alighting on the top of a stake, it drops into the water with an audible plunge to seize a minnow. The yellow breast of a Grey Wagtail, wading daintily amongst the cresses, makes another spot of colour. With harsh "giach, giach," a Snipe rises from a patch of rushes. Lower down, before it enters the pool, the stream loses itself for a time in a small boggy copse, where the alders stand amongst miry pools, upon whose borders earlier in the year marsh-marigolds—the king-cups of our childhood's days—shine like fire. There are small birds in the tops of the alders, clinging tit-like as they extract the seed from the cones, the process causing a tiny rattling noise, just loud enough to be heard. But they are not tits, for the glass shows here the gold-banded wing and green breast of a cock Siskin, and there the crimson-dyed frontlet of a Redpoll. Mixed bands of these two small finches may always be seen at this time of the year amongst the alders and birches, which they only desert when the seed has fallen; and a few minutes spent in watching their active and lively proceedings will not be thrown away.

By the end of November the arrival of northern birds is practically completed. Visitors to the south coast may sometimes see the Black Redstart, which every autumn arrives in small numbers from the Continent to spend the winter in sunny nooks amongst the cliffs of Cornwall and South Devon, though it is