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