Crossword-Solution: FORKTAILS 9 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 16

Indeed I know of few things more enjoyable than to sit, when the sun is shining, on the bank of a well-shaded burn, and, soothed by the soft melody of running water, watch the forktails moving nimbly over the boulders and stones with fairy tread, half-flight half-hop.

Forktails continually wag the tail, just as wagtails do, but not with quite the same vigour, possibly because there is so much more to wag! Like wagtails, they do not object to their feet being wet, indeed they love to stand in running water.

Spotted forktails are often seen near the places where the _dhobis_ wash clothes by banging them violently against rocks, hence the name dhobi-birds, by which they are called by many Europeans.

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.

The young ones were covered with tiny parasites, which seemed quite ready for a change of diet, for immediately after picking up one of the young forktails, I found some thirty or forty of these parasites crawling over my hand! There is luck in finding birds' nests, as in everything else.