Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/128

112 notion of the way to be happy. And it is happy: the vivacity and nimble eagerness of all its motions leave no doubt about that. No other bird behaves in this fashion. I feel sure that there must be some department of insect life which other birds have missed, or despised, and which the Wagtails have appropriated. There are green caterpillars on the tender shoots and little birds to seek for them, there are grasshoppers in the grass and mynas to chevy them, there are beetles and earwigs under the fallen leaves and babblers to dislodge them, there are midges in the air and swallows to hawk them, there are grubs in the rotten bough and woodpeckers to dig them out; but besides all these it appears that there are minute winged things on moist ground in great abundance, which rise like snipe when startled, and these are the game of the Water-wagtail. It runs and turns and twists and leaps into the air, and you cannot see what it is after, but you distinctly hear the snap of its little bill, like the pop of a distant snipe-shooter's gun. It follows the cattle in the pastures and runs in and out among their feet; they are its beaters, which drive the game for it. Or it hunts by itself in cool places, on the shady side of the house and wherever large trees keep out the sun.

I am thinking of the Grey Wagtail, which often wanders far from water, but not from coolness and shade. It is by far the commonest species we have and a very familiar bird throughout the cold weather. In the costume which it wears at that season the upper parts are bluish-grey, but its forehead and whole face are white. On its breast there is a black patch, exactly like a child's bib, and below