MOORLAND BIRDS 63 



Ring-ouzels are rather unevenly distributed among the 

 broken borders of the moors ; they are abundant in some 

 parts of the northern and western counties, but in others are 

 quite rare. They nest on or near the ground, among the 

 stones and heather, or in a chink in a dry-stone wall. After 

 they return from the south in April, they fill their chosen 

 haunts with a sweet if rather monotonous music much like 

 that of the missel-thrush, which does not penetrate beyond 

 the last sparse thickets of thorn. Blackbirds follow up the 

 sheltered streams higher than one would expect from their 

 fondness for warm hedges and gardens, and higher, as a rule, 

 than the song-thrushes. They seem able to turn up some 

 form of insect life from any sheltered corner among fallen 

 leaves ; but song-thrushes require in spring a steady supply 

 of the larger kind of snails, and these they can only find in 

 gardens, or among the low-lying hedges and copses. In 

 mid-winter they abandon altogether the central valleys of 

 the English lake district ; mildly as the west winds blow up 

 from Morecambe Bay, their song is not heard about the 

 head of Windermere or under Skiddaw till well on in 

 February. The titlark or meadow- pipit also leaves the 

 higher and barer moors in winter ; it is then that we often 

 see the wanderers from the hill counties picking along the 

 flooded margin of lowland rivers, or even on the banks of 

 suburban reservoirs. But by May the little dusky piping 

 birds are settled almost everywhere on the moors, inhabiting 

 the dim wastes of greyish grass and black peat where no 

 other bird will dwell. They nest under the rain-beaten tufts 

 of grass, or in pockets in the cushions of dark green hair- 

 moss ; and the cup of dry grass keeps the dark mottled eggs 

 dry and warm all through the long grey days of mist and 

 rain on the uplands. 



Titlarks haunt heather, or slopes of rough and shaggy 



