BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 69 



time, this power of sudden disappearance is the poor 

 fern-owl's chief protection from its persecutors, for, starting 

 as if for long flight, it drops upon the ground with a single 

 instantaneous movement, and where it drops there it lies 

 quite motionless — and everybody overruns the spot. Its 

 wonderfully beautiful colouring fortunately assimilates both 

 with the bark of trees and the bare ground, and the cleverest 

 of dogs will overshoot it without discovery. If flushed a 

 second time, it as often as not flies back to the spot, or 

 near it, where it was first startled. At night, when it is 

 feeding, coursing up and down above the heather and the 

 brackens, it has a beautiful flight, and should an owl 

 suddenly drop over the birches and begin to beat their 

 ground, the evolutions of the nightjars in silent protest are 

 as exquisite as any sea-bird's. 



To July belongs the skylark, a bird really of all the year, 

 but most intimately somehow the genius of the meadow. 

 The hay has been cut, the first brood of young are flown, 

 and the larks are again building, renewing the Spring with 

 the aftermath of grass. The glorious growth of the meadow, 

 spangled with ox-eye daisy and corn-flower, has been laid 

 low, and the scented harvest has been carted, and the larks 

 are busier than ever in the smooth-shorn field, while the 

 sky seems never so full of their song as when the hay- 

 makers are afield. The scythe and the terrible machine, 

 and the tramp of feet behind them, are fatal to many a brood, 



