174 BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



way, chased by a cock peewit, whose wife is sitting near-by, 

 perhaps a lurking gunner drops him, and as he picks him up, 

 the yellow yolk and thick bits of shell run from his guilty 

 mouth to the marsh. 



As the sun rises and disperses the mists rising from the 

 resting waters of the mere, and the day brightens, the sky 

 turning blue and the waters on the land glittering, he flies 

 off to his moist morass, and sleeps through the bright heat 

 of the day, for sunlight is hateful to him, thief that he is. 

 He does not like to " work " in the high noontide. 



But when the sun begins to sink behind the reed-beds 

 to the westward, he leaves his watery lair, and is often to 

 be seen shaling, swimming round and round in the azure, 

 rising, beating to windward — beating his long lithe wings 

 a few times as he comes to the wind — then, turning lazily 

 and rising up, another turn of the aerial screw, without 

 any apparent effort ; and when he has played in the 

 air to his sweet content, he descends from his aerial 

 flight, and uttering a few sharp cries like a kittiwake, 

 he begins beating his old station over the swamp crops in 

 search of young bii"ds and eggs ; but eggs he loves best I 

 think, and a good taste he has in eggs too. But he never 

 takes birds on the wing like a hawk. For a fortnight or 

 three weeks you may see him thus living a predator}' life in 

 lonely bachelorhood, when one fine morning you see his 

 hen has arrived from some strange land, and both go beat- 

 ing the broads. I have known them go ten times a day 

 round the very same beat round a broad-edge ; indeed, this 

 is characteristic of the hawk and harrier and owl tribe ; 

 and if perchance they drop upon any prey, and whilst eating 

 it hear a shot, they fly ofT, soon to return to their treasure 

 to finish it. 



But soon love inflames the cock's bosom, and he begins, after 

 the strange fashion of many birds, to build " cock's-nests " 

 upon some little eminence on a soft marsh rich with a crop 

 of swamp-grass, for a bare marsh is hateful to him, either 



