BY EDMUND SELOUS LONDON J. M. DENT & CO., ALDINE HOUSE 29 & 30 BEDFORD STREET, W.C. 1901...

Watching Great Plovers, etc. If life is, as some hold it to be, a vast melancholy ocean over which ships more or less sorrow-laden continually pass and ply, yet there lie here and there upon it isles of consolation on to which we may step out and for a time forget the winds and waves. One of these we may call Bird-isle—the island of watching and being entertained by the habits and humours of birds—and upon this one, for with the others I have here nothing to do, I will straightway land, inviting

All at once a bird makes a swift run forward, not one of those short little dainty runs—one and then another and another, with little start-stops between—that one knows so well, but a long, steady run down upon something, and at the same moment the glasses—if one is lucky and the distance not too great—reveal the object which has occasioned this, a delicate white thing floating in the air which one takes to be a thistle-down. This is secured and eaten, and we may imagine that the bird's peckings

The wings, however, in the instance which I observed and noted at the time, were kept closed. I can hardly think this is always the case. If it is, it may be because, though pretty enough—indeed lovely to an appreciative human eye—they yet do not in their colouring present anything like so bold and salient an appearance as the parts mentioned, with the display of which they might, perhaps, interfere, though I confess I do not think they would. With the redshank this is different, for "the redsha

Even here, owing principally to the friendly toilette-scene, I was not quite clear as to the nature of the bird's actions. How completely I at first mistook it in the case of the stock-dove with the way in which it was afterwards made plain to me, the following will show:— "Most interesting aerial nuptial evolutions of the male and female stock-dove.—They navigate the air together, following each other in the closest manner, one being, almost all the while, just above the other, their wings seem

"One of the male wheatears now enters a shallow depression in the ground—not a hole, or the mouth of a rabbit-burrow, but one of those natural fallings away of the soil which make rugged and give a character to these sandy, lichen-clothed wastes. As soon as he is in it he seems to become excited, and running forward and coming out on the opposite brink, he flies from this to the one by which he has entered, hardly two feet off, then instantly back again, again to the other, and so backwards and

When a bird flies up to its partner it usually comes down close beside it. The two will then be together for awhile, but soon they either walk or fly to a little distance from one another. After remaining apart for a longer or shorter time they visit again, then again separate, and so they continue to act, at longer or shorter intervals, till one or other of them flies off to sea. This system of making each other little visits and then going away and remaining for some time apart, seems a featur

I made many attempts to witness the feeding of these young ravens by their parents, but owing to there being no kind of cover from which I could watch, and no means of erecting a proper shelter, I was unable to do so. I did what I could by means of pieces of turf, and a plaid or waterproof stretched over them, but this was not sufficient to allay the suspicions of the old birds, who had always seen me as I came up, and from my first appearance over the brow of the hill flew around croaking and c

says Longfellow—lines which, to me at least, call up a graphic picture of the bird, though I do not know that the first contains anything which is specially characteristic of it; and Milton has recorded—as we may, perhaps, assume—the way in which its uncouth shape appealed to him by making it that which his grand angel-devil chooses, on one occasion, to assume. On another one, it may be remembered, Satan takes for his purposes the form of a toad, and on each, no doubt, the poet, who never appear

All the time the birds are down on the heap they are busily feeding, seeming to put their whole soul into each peck (like the single jest at the Mermaid) and all in a kind of sociable, yet but half friendly, competition with each other. Gradually they spread out a little from the heap, half-a-dozen greenfinches are amongst the straw that one has oneself pulled out from the stack, and one of them is feeding positively within three feet. To see them so near, and to think that they think you anywhe

Coming, now, to the opposite side of the bird's character—its boldness and enterprise—I remember one afternoon, when I had been watching the stone curlews, seeing, just as evening was falling, a moor-hen walking along the piece of wire netting which skirted a wheat-field, or rather an arid waste of sand where some wheat was feebly attempting to grow. The whole country around was the chosen haunt of the former birds, as opposed, therefore, to anything damp, moist, or marshy, as can well be imagin

I will now quote from my journal: "Walking over some arable land that rises gently into a slight hill, my attention is attracted by a number of rooks hanging in the air, just above a small clump of elm-trees on its crest. They keep alternately rising and falling as they circle over the trees, often perching amongst them, but soon gliding upwards from them again. A very common action is for two to hover, one above another, getting gradually quite close together, when both sinking, one may almost

"One rook has just found something, and, whilst standing with it in his bill, another comes forward to dispute it with him, but the attack is half-hearted, and seems more like a mere matter of form. After wards, when the same bird has the morsel on the ground in good pick-axeing position, a second rook advances upon him with a quick, sideway hop, looking cunning, sardonic, diabolic, and much for which words seem totally wanting. But this attack, though swift and vigorous, is not more successful

Anything lovelier than the picture presented by the two birds thus busied together in the early, dewy morning, it would be difficult to imagine. It would arouse the enthusiasm of all except very dull people, and is even a prettier thing to see, I think, than when both male and female work jointly. In the latter case the straightforward business element predominates, but here, the attendance of the male bird upon the female, and his evident pleasure in such attendance, his anxious interest in wha