DECEIVING WILD CREATURES. 37 



calmly sitting astride a stone wall some sixty- 

 yards away, waiting, as he afterwards explained, 

 " to see t'haak cum hoam." A thunderstorm 

 broke in blinding hail soon afterwards, and the 

 following day, alas ! I found that some member 

 of a herd of hill-grazing cattle had trodden on the 

 merlin's beautiful eggs and crushed them. Thus 

 is the naturalist photographer's patience tried. 



I love the golden plover's plaintive cry, 

 because it brings back to me the memory of days 

 of unforgettable sweetness, when, as a boy, I 

 wandered, happy and hungry, from one trout 

 stream to another, across wide stretches of breezy 

 Yorkshire moorland, with rowan tree fishing-rod 

 over my shoulder, and a home-made horsehair 

 line of such visible strength dangling at the end 

 that I now marvel how any fish gifted with 

 ordinary eyesight could have dared to venture 

 near it. 



After having tried hard, and failed ignomini- 

 ously, to find a nest belonging to this shy, wary, 

 and misleading species on the great stretches of 

 moorland lying between Shunnerfell and Water 

 Crag during May of last year, I met a shepherd 

 one morning who told me that he had found a 

 nest the previous evening containing a brace of 

 newly hatched chicks and two chipped eggs. I 

 saw at a glance there was little time to be lost, and 

 having no hiding contrivance of any kind with 



