WHEATEARS, DABCHICKS 69 



not following her, but continuing to hop about in each 

 other's vicinity as before. She remained there some 

 five or ten minutes, when she flew out over the 

 warrens, and with my attention concentrated on the 

 rival birds, I lost her, and cannot say where she went 

 down. 



" One of the male wheatears now enters a shallow 

 depression in the ground — not a hole, or the mouth 

 of a rabbit-burrow, but one of those natural fallings 

 away of the soil which make rugged and give a 

 character to these sandy, lichen-clothed wastes. As 

 soon as he is in it he seems to become excited, and 

 running forward and coming out on the opposite 

 brink, he flies from this to the one by which he 

 has entered, hardly two feet off, then instantly back 

 again, again to the other, and so backwards and for- 

 wards some dozen or twenty times, so rapidly that 

 he makes of himself a little arch in the air constantly 

 spanning the hollow, all in the greatest excitement. 

 Finishing here, he runs a little way to another such 

 depression, enters it, and coming out again, acts in 

 precisely the same way, making the same little 

 rapidly moving arch of two black up-and-down- 

 pointed wings, moving now this way, now that, now 

 forwards, now backwards, from edge to edge of the 

 trough, perching each time on each edge of it, but 

 so quickly, it seems rather to be on the points of 

 the wings than the feet that he comes down. Wings 

 are all one sees ; they whirl forwards and backwards, 

 backwards and forwards, making a little arch or 

 bridge, the highest point of which, in the centre — 

 which is the point of the upper wing — is some two 

 feet from the floor of the trough, whilst the point 



