30 BIRD WATCHING 



harmony with nature, with the stillness, the sadness, 

 the loneliness. This standing or pacing about whilst 

 calling roopily, and, as it were, in a stealthy manner 

 to each other, should be a very prosaic affair, one 

 would think, for a pair of peewits after such glorious 

 flying, but, no doubt, there is some excitement in it. 

 Perhaps it is thought a little fast, as some slow things 

 with us are, and hence the peculiar charm. 



" Now these two birds are standing lazily on two 

 of the black molehills which are all about the marshy 

 land — some of them of a size beyond one's compre- 

 hension — and making the wire-drawn cry at intervals 

 to each other. Lazily they stand, lazily they utter 

 it, and seem as though they had taken up their 

 roosting - place for the night. But when the night 

 falls they will be hurrying shadows in it, and their 

 cries will come out of the darkness, mingling with 

 the bleatings of the snipe." 



There is a sameness and yet a constant difference 

 in the aerial sports and evolutions of peewits. It 

 is like a continual variation of the same air or a 

 recurrent thread of melody winding itself through 

 a labyrinth of ever - changing notes. Parts of the 

 melody are where two skim low over the ground in 

 rapid pursuit of each other. One settles, the other 

 skims on, then makes a great upward sweep, turns, 

 sweeps down and back again, again rises, turns and 

 sweeps again, and so on, rising and falling over the 

 same wide space with the regular motions and long 

 rushing swing of a pendulum. Each time it comes 

 rushing down upon the bird that has settled, and 

 each time, at the right moment, this one makes a 

 little ascension towards it, sometimes floating above 



