I went to look over a gate to see how the corn was rising--it is so short, now in June, that it will not hide a hare--and on coming near there was a cock chaffinch perched on the top, a fine bird in full colour. He did not move though I was now within three yards, nor till I could have almost touched him did he fly; he had a large caterpillar in his beak, and no doubt his nest or the young from it were in the hedge. In feeding the young birds the old ones always perch first at a short distance, and after waiting a minute proceed to their fledgelings. Should a blackbird come at full speed across the meadow and stay on a hedge-top, and then go down into the mound, it is certain that his nest is there. If a thrush frequents a tree, flying up into the branches for a minute and then descending into the underwood, most likely the young thrushes are there. Little indeed do the birds care for appropriate surroundings; anything does for them, they do not aim at effect. I heard a tit-lark singing his loudest, and found him perched on the edge of a tub, formed of a barrel sawn in two, placed in the field for the horses to drink from, as there was no pond. Some swallows are very fond of a notice-board fastened to a pole beside the Hogsmill bank. Upon its upper edge they perch and twitter sweetly. There is a muddy pond by Tolworth Farm, near the road; it is muddy because a herd of cows drink from and stand in it, stirring up the bottom. An elm overhangs it, and the lower boughs are dead and leafless. On these there are always swallows twittering over the water. Grey and yellow wagtails run along the verge. In the morning the flock of goslings who began to swim in the pond, now grown large and grey, arrange themselves in a double row, some twenty or thirty of them, in loose order, tuck their bills under their wings and sleep. Two old birds stand in the rear as if in command of the detachment. A sow, plastered with mud like the rhinoceri in the African lakes, lies on the edge of the brown water, so nearly the hue of the water and the mire, and so exactly at their juncture, as to be easily overlooked. But the sweet summer swallows sing on the branches; they do not see the wallowing animal, they see only the sunshine and the summer, golden buttercups and blue sky.