72 



BIKD-LIFE ON THE MOORS IN AUGUST. 



On reading year after year in the August numbers of the 

 Fidel the results of the annual campaign on our northern 

 moors, and considering the immense extent of wild country 

 which, after eight or ten months of unbroken peace, is 

 simultaneously invaded and searched out by man and dog, it 

 always strikes me as remarkable how few wild creatures, save 

 the game, come in the way of the hosts of guns. From scores 

 of moors, forests, and fells arrives the almost unvarying 

 record — grouse, nothing but grouse. Some, perhaps, who 

 only see the moors during the season of purple heather, may 

 conclude that the wild hills are rather deficient in variety of 

 bird-life. The " Twelfth," in point of fact, falls at what 

 happens to be ornithologically one of the least interesting 

 periods of the year — between the departure of most of the 

 summer birds and the arrival of the winter ones. Most of 

 the former, whose beauty tends so much to enliven the heath- 

 ery solitudes during spring and summer, have reared their 

 young and departed. Some have disappeared entirely ; for 

 example, I have never observed a Redshank or common Sand- 

 piper — both of which are numerous in spring — remaining 

 inland so late as the "Twelfth." The Black-headed Gulls too 

 are gone, though occasionally an exceptionally late straggler 

 may be met with. Such arc almost invariably the brown- 

 mottled young of the year, probably late hatched. The 

 Dunlin I have only once come across in the shooting season 

 — a newly-fledged young bird, which I shot on August 15th 

 in the backward season of 1870. 



Of the moor-bred fowl, amongst the most conspicuous in 

 spring are the Curlew and Golden Plover. In both these 

 species a great movement has taken place between the middle 



