“One’s joy, two’s grief,
     Three’s marriage, four’s death,
     Five’s heaven, six is hell,
     Seven’s the devil his own sel’.”

Other rhymes make “one” an unlucky number, and there are many people in Worcestershire who never see a solitary magpie without touching their hats to avert the omen, and convert it to one of good-luck; as a man once said to me, “It is as well not to lose a chance.”

The kingfisher, I suppose the most beautiful of British birds, was, with all my brooks, a common bird at Aldington.  Its steady flight, following the course of a stream, and its brilliant colouring make it very conspicuous, its turquoise blue varying to dark green, and its orange breast flashing in the sun.  I found a nest in a water-rat’s old hole, with six very transparent white eggs, deriving a rosy tint from the yolk, almost visible, within the shell.  The hole had an entrance above the bank, descended vertically, turned at a right angle where the nest, merely a layer of small fish-bones, was placed, and ended horizontally on the side of the bank.  I once saw six young kingfishers sitting side by side on a dead branch, close together, evidently just out of the nest.  And I was fortunate in seeing a kingfisher dart upon the water, hover for an instant like a hawk-moth over honeysuckle, and, having caught a small gudgeon, fly away with it in its beak.  They, like the martin, always perch on leafless wood, so that the leaves shall not impede their flight when pouncing upon a fish, and no doubt this is the reason they sometimes perch on the top joint of the rod of a hidden fisherman.

The nuthatch, called here the “mud-dauber,” from its habit of narrowing the hole of a starling’s old nest, with mud, for its own use as a nesting-place, is a more common bird in the Forest than in Worcestershire.  It is a provident bird, firmly wedging hazel nuts in the autumn into crevices of the Scots-fir, for a winter store, Bewick mentions that it uses these crevices as vices, to hold the nut securely, while it cracks it; but he does not recognize the fact that they have been stored long previously.  I have seen a great number of nuts so stored and quite sound.

Bewick, by the way, who wrote his History of British Birds in 1797, presents in one of his inimitable “tailpiece” wood-cuts a prevision of the aeroplane.  The picture shows the airman seated in a winged car, guiding with reins thirteen harnessed herons as the motive power, and mounting upwards, apparently very near the moon.  If he can see the modern interpretation of his dream he must be pleasantly surprised.  Bewick’s woodcock is one of the most beautiful portraits in the book:  the accurate detail of the feather markings of the wings and back and the softer tone of the breast are as nearly perfection as possible.  A woodcock visited Aldington in one of the very severe winters but managed to elude all pursuers.  It has been said, and also contradicted, that the woodcock when rising from the ground uses its long bill as a lever to assist its starting, just as an oarsman pushes off from the bank with a boat-hook or oar; I myself have seen one rising from a bare and marshy place, and the position of its bill certainly gave me the impression that the idea was well founded.