COUNTRY LIFE
WATER has an extra attraction for birds—and indeed bees—when spring comes. I have been watching from a window a shallow concrete pond overhung by a weeping willow ; and, since the upland is dry, all manner of bird resort to this little pooL Wood pigeons abandon their habitual shyness to drink and bathe there, and as soon as they arrive—a date much earlier than it used to be if older books are to be believed—the turtle doves will follow them. By far the most habitual bathers are yellow- hammers ; and if the angle of the sun, penetrating the jalousie of the willow boughs, is just right, they will be as conspicuous by the redness of their backs as by the yellow of their heads. How many times I have been asked to identify a red-backed bird ; and it is always a yellow- hammer as seen in a particular light. Starlings, happily singularly few this year, are such energetic bathers that they soak the ground round the pond, to the benefit of the pink primroses, and in dry summers to swallows in search of damp mud for their nests. The willow itself even more obviously beflags spring than the Lent lilies. From a distance outside the garden people ask whether the brightness comes from leaf or flower. You must go quite dose to see, for the two open in one another's arms, and are almost identical in tint. For the sake of this spring virtus salix vitellina pendula is even more desirable than S. daph- noides, the best perhaps of the so-called pussy willows. The birds skip up into the branches between bouts of bathing.
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