Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/259

Rh Cowan Head, February 12, 1842.

My dear Gough,

Concerning the "window-peeper," as we call it, which I mentioned in my last latter. Having half an hour to spare this evening, and the incident being fresh on my mind, I will get it off my hands.

This "window-peeper" was a grey wagtail (Motacilla Boarula), which came and peeped in at our windows almost every morning, for three months together. It was an exquisitely beautiful bird. The colours of its plumage were as bright as if it had been a dweller within the tropics. I need not say that the ordinary grey wagtail, in fine leather, is a beautiful bird, but this was an extraordinary bird, so pretty and so graceful besides. Well, it came to us in the first week in October. Before the blinds of our chamber windows had been drawn up one minute, there it was, pecking at the glass of first one pane and then another. Every morning it came with the same certainty as the morning light. We are not quite free from superstition at our house, and therefore a repetition of these periodical visits began, erelong, to give rise to ominous conjectures. On the morning of the third day it was predicted that something was "sure to happen"! I cannot myself boast of being quite superior to all superstitious influences, but I endeavoured to reason in this way, that so fair a visitant could not be a harbinger of woe! If it had been the owl, as Chatterton says—

Or the bat, or solitary magpie,—any of these birds of evil omen might have staggered my un-faith, but I felt quite sure that the grey wagtail, so redolent of beauty and purity, if it were a spiritual manifestation at all, must bring with it "airs from heaven." The third day came and went, and the seventh day came and went—two mystical periods passed, and yet nothing very extraordinary "happened." Superstitious thoughts now vanished. The stranger, erst looked upon with a kind of awe, now became a welcome friend. The windows were thrown open, and he had a general invitation to "bed and board."

But no: my feathered friend conceived that that might be leading to too close an intimacy—too great familiarity—and he preferred the medium acquaintanceship of the closed window. When the sash was up, he carefully avoided the vacuum, and flew against the upper