66 BIRD WATCHING 



without any performance of the sort. This, if we could 

 be sure that it was the same bird, would seem to show 

 that the habit was in an unfixed and fluctuating 

 condition. On the other hand, a bird that acts thus 

 in the case of its young, would, I think, always act so. 

 Perhaps it may be wondered why I have not in- 

 cluded the peewit in the list of birds which employ, 

 or appear to employ, a ruse in favour of their young 

 ones, since this bird is always given as the stock 

 instance of it. The reason is, that whilst the birds I 

 mentioned have always, in my experience, gone off, 

 so to speak, like clock-work, when the occasion for 

 it arrived, I have never known a peewit to do so, 

 though I have probably disturbed as many scores 

 — perhaps hundreds — of them, under the requisite 

 conditions, as I have units of the others. I have also 

 inquired of keepers and warreners, and found their ex- 

 perience to tally with mine. They have spoken of the 

 cock bird " leading you astray " aerially, whilst the hen 

 sits on the nest, and of both of them flying, with 

 screams, close about your head when the young are 

 out, which statements I have often verified. But they 

 have never professed to have seen a peewit flapping 

 over the ground as with a broken wing, in the way it 

 is so constantly said to do. I cannot, therefore, but 

 think that, by some chance or other, an action common 

 to many birds has been particularly, and yet wrongly, 

 ascribed to the peewit. As it seems to me, this is just 

 one of those cases where negative evidence is almost 

 as strong as affirmative, and though, of course, quite 

 ready to accept any properly witnessed instance of the 

 peewit's acting in this way, I cannot but conclude that 

 it does so very rarely indeed. 



