The Golden Plover 



CHAPTER XI 



An Impression of Axe Edge 



The ornithologists of to-day are a somewhat numerous 

 tribe, including persons of varied tastes, habits, am- 

 bitions, and, above everything, means. Among them 

 are a few fortunate individuals whose object in life is 

 to seek out the least familiar species, the rarest in the 

 land or the most local in their distribution, or most 

 difficult to get at and observe closely. Many of us 

 would like to do our birding in that way, but few are 

 free to take the whole year for a holiday, to travel long 

 distances, to spend days, weeks, months in the quest — 

 just to see and study some bird in its haunts — a pine 

 forest in Rothiemurchus or some such "vast contiguity 



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