46 Northern Observations of Inland Birds 



plaintive of moorland sounds, yet among the most joyous, 

 and it is strange how the notes of these hill birds, like 

 the garments they wear, are so exactly in harmony with 

 the wind-swept desolation of their surroundings. I have 

 heard plovers passing over London at night time, and 

 their musical piping, high in the heavens, was so incon- 

 gruous as to seem almost discordant. 



It is difficult to decide what are the factors that govern 

 the feeding hours of these moorland birds. They are 

 both diurnal and nocturnal. On certain nights a death- 

 like stillness reigns upon their haunts, while other nights 

 the very air vibrates with the callnotes of feeding birds. 

 They are everywhere astir, and weather conditions do 

 not seem specially to influence their movements. I have 

 been on the hills at midnight when every tuft of heather 

 seemed to find a voice, and the following night, perhaps, 

 at the same hour, given the same weather conditions, 

 not a bird was to be heard. Sometimes they are astir 

 all through the night, sometimes they settle to roost 

 with the dusk and are silent till daybreak, and this seems 

 to apply to all birds which winter along the sea shore. 

 If the nights of special activity immediately succeeded 

 rain it would be easily understood, for their food would 

 then be most plentiful, but this is not so. 



I have often wondered whether the feeding hours of 

 these birds living inland is influenced by the tide of 

 their maritime haunts — that is, whether the periods of 

 activity inland coincide with the periods of activity along 

 the coast. When the birds are living by the sea, their 

 feeding times are decided entirely by the tide. They 

 are active when the tide is out, whether it be day or night, 

 and idle during the hours of flood tide. Such strange 

 and distant conditions often govern movements of birds 

 that the theory advanced is not so wild as it may at first 

 seem. When these birds are living by the sea they often 



