Just as men from various causes congregate in particular places, so there are spots in the fields--in the country generally--which appear to specially attract birds of all kinds. Wide districts are almost bare of them: on a single farm you may often find a great meadow which scarcely seems to have a bird in it, while another little oddly-cornered field is populous with them. This orchard and garden at Wick is one of the favourite places. It is like one of those Eastern marts where men of fifty different nationalities, and picturesquely clad, jostle each other in the bazaars: so here feathered travellers of every species have a kind of leafy capital. When the nesting time is over the goldfinches quit the orchard, and only return for a brief call now and then. I almost think the finches have got regular caravan routes round and across the fields which they travel in small bands. In the meadow, just without the close-cropped hawthorn which encloses one side of the orchard, is a thick hedge, the end of which comas right up to the apple trees, being only separated by the ha-ha wall and a ditch. This hedge, dividing two meadows, is about two hundred yards long and well grown with a variety of underwood, hazel, willow, maple, hawthorn, blackthorn, elder, etc, and studded with some few elms and ashes, and a fine horse-chestnut. Down the ditch for some distance runs a little stream (except in a long drought); and where another hedge branches from it is a hollow space arched over and roofed with boughs. Now this hedge is a favourite highway of birds and other wild creatures, and leads direct to the orchard. Most of the visitors to the house and garden come down it--it is one of their caravan routes. If on a summer's morning you go and sit in the gateway about half-way up the hedge, partly hidden by a pollard ash and great hawthorn bushes, you will not have long to wait before you hear the pleasant calls of the greenfinches coming. They seem always to travel two or more pairs together, and constantly utter a soothing call, as if to say to their companions, "Here we are, close by, dearest." They all appear to know exactly where they are going--flitting across the gateway one by one, moving of one accord in the same direction; and their contented notes gradually become inaudible as they go towards the orchard. The goldfinches use the same route; so do the bullfinches. Even the starlings, before they come to the house, usually perch on an ash tree in this hedge. There is another hedge, running parallel to it, 150 yards distant, the end of which also approaches the premises, but it is comparatively deserted. You may wait there in vain and see nothing but a robin.