. Birds, beasts and fishes of the Norfolk broadland . nknows they will build close by, for they never wander farfrom the place where they were bred and born. The reed-pheasants are hardy, sociable little fellows; in-deed, in nesting time they often, like red-shanks and pee-wits, build close to one another—one coys the other,as the solitary fenmen say; but the hard winter of 1890-91was very fatal to these little fen-birds, and the followingspring but two nests were found in a district most dearto them. Yet they are not extinct, and may still be seenin the Broads wherever the swampy crops grow t
. Birds, beasts and fishes of the Norfolk broadland . nknows they will build close by, for they never wander farfrom the place where they were bred and born. The reed-pheasants are hardy, sociable little fellows; in-deed, in nesting time they often, like red-shanks and pee-wits, build close to one another—one coys the other,as the solitary fenmen say; but the hard winter of 1890-91was very fatal to these little fen-birds, and the followingspring but two nests were found in a district most dearto them. Yet they are not extinct, and may still be seenin the Broads wherever the swampy crops grow thick inwinter and sparsely in spring. And, like the fenman, theyare mysterious, ever seeking the seclusion of the reed-pheasant is, after all, the last link with an earlierage, a period when the fenman lived in inaccessible morasses,with no other companions than the flickering will-o-the-wispsand the watery tribes of birds whose strange voices filled hissoul with a native poetry that increased his natural melan-choly and REED-PHEASANTS AND NEST. CHAPTER XXI THE LONG-TAILED TITMOUSE Or titimouse, as the fenmen call this moth-like bird, alwaysassociates itself in my mind with the humming-bird. Anyone who has seen a living gem of a humming-bird hoveringmoth-hke about the trumpet-shaped flowers of a plantain orbanana-tree in the tropics, cannot fail to compare it to thehovering of a long-tailed titmouse about an ivy-covered treein summer-time when in search of insects. Moreover, theface of the bird resembles that of a large moth in its round-ness, beady eyes, texture, and general expression. Alto-gether he is an artistic creature in form and colouring aswell as in habits, for he builds one of the deftest and mostbeautiful of all birds nests. The silvery lichen-covered home,woven amid a large branch of ivy, or in some scaly-barkedgorse bush, is a little masterpiece, although perhaps ratherinconvenient for the mother, who has to sit with her longtail fol
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectbirdsen, bookyear1895
