In one of the Locks at the salmon-fishery at Skerton, a Water Ouzel this year built her nest - a large and curious heap of dried grass, moss and beech leaves, ingeniously interwoven and had even brought out three young ones, when the spring tides, which overflowed the wears last week, invaded her secret home, and destroyed the callow brood.  The poor mother, evidently in a state of the utmost perplexity and distress, was seen running to and fro upon the surface of the Lock, as the unfeeling water approached her treasures; nor did she forsake her little ones, until the lock was entirely covered by the tide.  It is somewhat singular, that the instinct of her species did not direct this simple bird to fix her nest in a safer spot.  Some of our readers may perhaps remember the beautiful episode of " Ellen" in Wordsworth's Excursion.  The poet, having told the sad tale of her sorrow, the building and blighting of her youthful hopes, observes;-

She had built,

Her fond maternal heart had built, a nest,

In blindness all too near the river's edge;

That work a summer flood with hasty swell

Had swept away;

Among the stone-work and natural rock over which the picturesque waterfall at Beetham descends about a mile on the south side of Miluthorpe, a pair of Water Ouzels have for many years fixed their home; and it is curious as well as interesting to watch them return to their snug retreat, by plunging through the crested foam of the torrent.  The Water Ouzel, unlike the Ring Ouzel, (which , by the way, is larger in size, and blacker in colour), is a lonely bird, and lives chiefly in the neighbourhood of quiet streams - particularly selecting such as glide through rocky channels.  Its food is small fishes, for which it dives into deep places, and even runs at the bottom of the river as easily as on dry land.  It is somewhat less than a black-bird; of a brownish colour, with a white mark on its breast and neck. - Lancaster Herald