CHAPTER XV 



MOORLAND BIRDS IN AUGUST 



On August the Twelfth, British moorlands are in- 

 vaded at a thousand points by man and dog, after the 

 enjoyment of eight or ten months of unbroken peace. 

 In these circumstances, it has always struck me as 

 remarkable how very few wild creatures, save the game, 

 fall in the way of these hosts of guns. From scores 

 of moors, forests, and fells, there comes the almost 

 unvarying record— grouse, nothing but grouse. Many 

 who only see the moorlands during the season of purple 

 heather, must conclude that they are rather deficient in 

 variety of bird-life. The "Twelfth," in point of fact, 

 falls on what happens to be, ornithologically, one of 

 the less interesting periods of the year — in the interval 

 between the departure of most of the summer-birds and 

 the arrival of the winter visitants. The great bulk 

 of the former, whose presence during four months past 

 has so adorned the heathery solitudes, have departed. 

 The redshank and dunlin have disappeared ; though, 

 once only, I find a note of the latter — a late-fledged 

 youngster in the backward season of 1879; which I shot 

 on August 15th, thinking that it might be a jack- 

 snipe. The gulls too, of both kinds, have gone, save for 

 an odd laggard, and the sandpipers no longer enliven the 



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