CHAPTER IV 



SPRING-TIME ON THE MOORS— (continued) 



Whatever buffets and disenchantments Spring may 

 inflict on mankind, its vagaries affect but little the 

 ordered lives of the feathered race. Throughout March 

 and April, the strange love-song of the Blackcock charac- 

 terises each glen and valley of the moorland. One hears 

 everywhere that curious low note- — half bubbling, half 

 hissing — and presently descries its author, a revolving 

 black and white spot, in some wide pasture or on the 

 rush-clad slope of the hill. Hard by, one sees his 

 consorts, half a dozen greyhens, some picking off rush- 

 seeds, others preening or resting, all supremely careless 

 and apparently unmindful of these demonstrations 

 elaborated for their attraction. 



At this season (April), the performance is almost 

 incessant, lasting all day. As early as February it has 

 begun, but is then confined to the first hour or two 

 after daybreak. It is then one sees protracted combats 

 between rival monarchs. So swift are their movements 

 that human eye can scarce follow the fortunes of the 

 fight in its critical stage- — my own, at least, utterly fails. 

 Yet never has an apparently impossible subject been 

 more vigorously portrayed than has this, by my friend 



