6 BIRD WATCHING 



for some time upright and perfectly still, makes a 

 sudden and very swingy bob forward with the head, 

 the tail at the same time swinging up, just in the 

 way that a wooden bird performs these actions upon 

 one's pulling a string. This again seems to have no 

 special reference to anything, unless it be deportment. 

 All at once a bird makes a swift run forward, not 

 one of those short little dainty runs — one and then 

 another and another, with little start-stops between — 

 that one knows so well, but a long, steady run down 

 upon something, and at the same moment the glasses 

 — if one is lucky and the distance not too great — 

 reveal the object which has occasioned this, a delicate 

 white thing floating in the air which one takes to be 

 a thistle-down. This is secured and eaten, and we 

 may imagine that the bird's peckings at it after it is 

 in his possession are to disengage the seed from the 

 down. But all at once — before you have had time to 

 set down the glasses and make the note that the great 

 plover {(Edicnemus Crepitans) will snap at a wandering 

 thistle-down, and having separated the delicate little 

 seed-sails from the seed, eat the latter, etc., etc. — a 

 small brown moth comes into view flying low over a 

 belt of dry bushy grass that helps, with the bracken, 

 to edge the sandy warren, for these wastes are given 

 over to rabbits and large landowners, and are marked 

 "warrens" on the map. Instantly the same bird (who 

 seems to catch sight of the moth just as you do) starts 

 in pursuit with the same rapid run and head stretched 

 eagerly out. He gets up to the moth and essays to 

 catch it, pecking at it in a very peculiar way, not 

 excitedly or wildly, but with little precise pecks, the 

 head closely and guardedly following the moth's 



