128 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



warble at a considerable distance and does not know 

 whose voice it is but if on any silent heath or common 

 or grassland, or any furze-grown brambly waste, you 

 should catch a very delicate warbled song, a mere drop 

 of sound, yet to all other bird sounds about it like the 

 drop of dew or rain among many other crystal, colour- 

 less drops, which catches the light at the right angle 

 and shines with loveliest colour, you may safely say that 

 it was a whinchat. A fugitive sound heard at a 

 distance, of so exquisite a purity and sweetness, so tender 

 an expression, that you stand still and hold your breath 

 to listen and think, perhaps, if it is not repeated, that 

 it was only an imagined sound. 



An even more characteristic sound of the high moor 

 than these small voices which are not listened to is the 

 curlew's voice: not the beautiful wild pipe nor the harsh 

 scream, the whaup's cry that frightens the superstitious, 

 but the gentler lower varied sounds of the breeding 

 season when the birds are talking to one another and 

 singing over their nests and eggs and little ones. Best 

 of all of these notes is the prolonged trill, which sounds 

 low yet may be heard distinctly a quarter of a mile 

 away or further, and strongly reminds me of the trilling 

 spring call of the spotted tinamou, the common partridge 

 of the Argentine plains — a trill that is like a musical 

 whisper which grows and dwells on the air and fades 

 into silence. A mysterious sound which comes out of 

 the earth or is uttered by some filmy being half spirit 

 and half bird floating invisible above the heath. I liked 

 these invisible curlews, singing their low song, better 



