130 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



the brilliant sunshine, the size so exaggerated by the 

 light and motion as to produce the illusion of a big bird, 

 the only one left alive by the Philistines and destroyers. 

 But it is a beautiful illusion which lasts only a few 

 moments. In all this Peak district you will not find a 

 larger bird than a curlew or mallard or crow, that very 

 big bird which my clergyman told me about. Not a 

 buzzard, not a harrier, not a raven, or any other species 

 which when soaring would seem an appropriate object 

 and part of the scenery in these high wild places. 



What a contrast between all these delicate voices of 

 the moorland, from the faint tinkle of the rising and 

 falling pipit to the curlew's trill, and others I have 

 omitted, the golden plover and water-ouzel, the aerial 

 bleat of the snipe, the wail of the peewit and thin sharp 

 pipe of the sandpiper or " water-squealer " as the 

 natives call it — between all these and the red grouse. 

 He has no music in him, but great power. On these 

 high moors his habit is to sit or stand on a stone wall 

 to sun himself and keep an eye on his wives and rivals 

 and the world generally. He stands, head erect, 

 motionless, statuesque, the harsh-looking heap of dark 

 gritstone forming an appropriate pedestal. For he is 

 like a figure cut in some hard dark red stone himself 

 — red gritstone, or ironstone, or red granite, or, better 

 still, deep-red serpentine, veined and mottled with 

 black, an exceedingly hard stone which takes a fine 

 polish. And in voice and character the bird is what 

 he looks, hard and brave, both as wooer and fighter. 

 Even near the end of May when many hens are in- 



