rs did it happen to be within a hundred miles of
London. Not that the prosaic _dhobi_ cares two straws for the
scenery--nor, I fear, does the pretty little forktail. As I have
already hinted, forktails are rather shy birds. If they think they
are being watched they become restless and stand about on boulders,
uttering a prolonged plaintive note, which is repeated at intervals
of a few seconds. When startled they fly off, emitting a loud scream.
But they are pugnacious to others of their kind, especially at the
breeding season. I once saw a pair attack and drive away from the
vicinity of their nest a Himalayan whistling-thrush (_Myiophoneus
temmincki_)--another bird that frequents hill-streams, and a near
relation of the Malabar whistling-thrush or idle schoolboy.

The nursery of the forktail, although quite a large cup-shaped
structure, is not easy to discover; it blends well with its
surroundings, and the birds certainly will not betray its presence
if they know they are being watched. The nest is, to use Hume's words,
"sometimes hidden in a rocky niche, sometimes on a bare ledge of rock
overhung by drooping ferns and sometimes on a sloping bank, at the
root of some old tree, in a very forest of club moss." I once spent
several afternoons in discovering a forktail's nest which I was
positive existed and contained young, because I had repeatedly seen
the parents carrying grubs in the bill. My difficulty was that the
stream to which the birds had attached themselves was in a deep ravine,
the sides of which were so steep that no animal save a cat could have
descended it without making a noise and being seen by the birds.
Eventually I decorated my _topi_ with bracken fronds, after the
fashion of 'Arry at Burnham Beeches on the August bank holiday. Thus
arrayed, I descended to the stream and hid myself in the hollow stump
of a tree, near the place where I knew the nest must be. By crouching
down and drawing some foliage about me, I was able to command a small
stretch of the stream. My arrival was of course the signal for loud
outcries on the part of the parent forktails. However, after I had
been squatting about ten minutes in my _cache_, to the delight of
hundreds of winged insects, the suspicions of the forktails subsided,
and the birds began collecting food, working their way upstream. They
came nearer and nearer, until one of them passed out of sight, although
it was within 10 feet of me. It was thus evident that the ne