122 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



the class of feelings by which he is dominated. 

 But how spring-in- winteryfied is all this ! — 



" And on old Hiem's thin and icy crown 

 An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds 

 Is, as in mockery, set." 



And then, all at once, from the midst of the walnut 

 tree, comes the cry of a peewit, rendered to the life 

 by one of these birds. There are no peewits near, 

 nor, though the wide waste around is their very 

 own, have they been seen there for months. The 

 fenlands have long claimed them, and the fenlands 

 are seven miles distant. Most strange — and pleas- 

 ing strange — it is, to hear their absolute note, when 

 they are all departed. I have sat and heard a 

 particular starling, on which my eyes were fixed, 

 thus mimic the unmistakable cry of the peewit, 

 eight or nine times In succession. It was the spring 

 note, so that, this being in January, also, it would 

 have been still more remarkable had the peewit 

 itself uttered it. 



Over the more barren parts of the Sahara, here, 

 and even where some thin and scanty-growing 

 wheat crops struggle with the sandy soil, the great 

 plovers, or stone-curlews, may often be seen feed- 

 ing, cheek by jowl, with the peewits. Scattered 

 amongst them both, are, generally, some pheasants, 

 partridges, fieldfares, thrushes, and mistle-thrushes, 

 and all these birds are apt, upon occasions, to come 

 into collision with one another — or, rather, the 

 stone-curlews and mistle-thrushes, being the most 

 bellicose amongst them, are apt to fall out between 

 themselves, or with the rest. For the stone-curlew, 



