76 BRITAIN'S BIRDS AND THEIR NESTS. 



surroundings. The cry is faintly reminiscent of the Peewit, 

 long left behind on the lower levels, but is whistled, 

 not wailed, and is light, almost cheerful, instead of 

 monotonous and exaggeratedly plaintive. Decidedly a 

 pleasant ciy, we think, and look up to see a pair 

 of Plovers fly quickly across our path, and, undeterred 

 by our close approach, settle in a hollow in the moor not 

 twenty yards away. In a few seconds we mount the rise 

 which hid their exact landing-place from our view, and 

 we see before us a hollow with clumps of heather and 

 rank grasses, patches of fresh green turf, black spots of bare 

 peat, dark, mottled green growths of moss, and random 

 flecks of white — the heads of the cotton-grass growing in 

 the damp of the hollow. Against such a favourable back- 

 ground our Plovers seem able to melt away, but move- 

 ment betrays them. The white, small though its area, 

 is probably the first to catch the eye, as what we passed 

 over for a wisp of cotton - grass suddenly moves across 

 the ground and reveals the bird. It is conspicuous 

 enough now, and we have difficulty in believing that a 

 moment before we could stare straight at it without 

 seeing it. The resemblance to the background is not 

 extraordinary, and it is, rather unexpectedly perhaps, in 

 the variedness of the plumage that we must look for the 

 secret. We did indeed see the bird from the first, but 

 we did not see it as a whole. An irregular patch of 

 mottled green, a wisp or two of white, a shapeless patch 

 of black. None of these three alone suggests a bird in 

 any way, and each is repeated a hundredfold in the 

 surroundings. We have nothing definite to look for, but 

 must vaguely seek to discover which of these patches 

 must be grouped together to make up the shape of a 

 bird. When the required patches suddenly move altogether 

 we co-ordinate them instantly. If they remain still, co- 



