66 



SPRING 



ground that each prefers. Lapwings are fondest of wet tracts 

 of short green grass, generally interspersed with clumps 

 of rushes. Curlews seek out on grass-moors the concave 

 bights or ' slacks ' which lie between the head and the 

 shoulder of the hill, and are full of the pale tangled grass 

 which botanists call flying bent-grass, and which makes what 

 the keepers call 'white ground.' They also haunt gentle 

 slopes of the same kind of grass towards the bottom of the 

 hills — often within the walls of the lowest fields. If they see 



a human figure come gradually into view at a distance, the 

 hen birds of both species will slip quickly from the nest and 

 run to a considerable distance before taking to flight, as 

 though from the nest itself. Meanwhile the cock birds are 

 wheeling and crying overhead ; they endeavour to distract 

 the intruder's attention from the nest by drawing him in a 

 different direction. Sometimes the sitting birds can be spied 

 at a distance with a field-glass, after approaching within a 

 few hundred yards, under cover of rising ground, or in the 

 shelter of some deep ravine. Without the aid of a glass 

 nests of both species can be found by approaching some 

 likely spot under cover, as just described, and suddenly 

 appearing within a hundred and fifty yards or less of the 



