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characteristic love-antics of birds in general — peck 

 about at bits of grass, or any other such object 

 growing or lying within their reach ; and I have 

 speculated on the possibility of actions like these, 

 though at first of a nervous and merely mechanical 

 character, having grown, at last, into the deliberate 

 and intentional building of a nest. Whether, in the 

 case of the peewit, we see quite the first stage of 

 the process, I will not be certain ; but we see it, I 

 believe, in another of our common British birds, 

 viz. the wheat-ear. My notes on the extraordinary 

 behaviour of two males of this bird, whilst courting 

 the female, I have published in my work, " Bird 

 Watching," ^ from which I will now quote a few 

 lines bearing upon this point : " Instead of fighting, 

 however, which both the champions seem to be 

 chary of, one of them again runs into a hollow, this 

 time a very shallow one, but in a manner slightly 

 different. He now hardly rises from the ground, 

 over which he seems more to spin, in a strange sort 

 of way, than to fly ; to buzz, as it were, in a con- 

 fined area, and with a tendency to go round and 

 round. Having done this a little, he runs from the 

 hollow, plucks a few little bits of grass, returns 

 with them into it, drops them there, comes out 

 again, hops about as before, flies up into the air, 

 descends, and again dances about." Now, here, a 

 bird brings to a certain spot, not unlike such a one 

 as the nest is usually built in — approaching it, at 

 any rate — some of the actual materials of which the 

 nest is composed, and I ask if, under the circum- 

 stances, it can possibly be imagined that such bird 



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