GHAPTER “I'v. 
FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A DUNLIN. 
I BELONG to the ranks of the “inevitable”? Dunlin, but I belong also 
to its small-beaked chestnut-coloured aristocracy, the inhabitants in spring 
time of the Yorkshire Fells. There are other members of our family—fat, 
country cousins, so to speak—who visit England in their thousands during 
migration without ever staying to breed in it; but we, the genuine Britishers, 
the Trojugenz, if we may so style ourselves, look down upon them, and when 
we do meet in autumn on the shores, we keep ourselves apart from their 
motley gatherings on the mud-flats, and frequent rather the small tidal drains 
at the edge of the saltings, sometimes, though not often, consorting with our 
near relations the Little Stints. 
It was late when I made my appearance on the Fells; the Grey Crows 
had robbed mother of her first clutch of eggs, and we were a second brood, 
but perhaps none the worse off on that account, since we escaped the drenching 
rain, which had killed off so many of our relatives in the early days of June. I 
remember admiring the beauty of the four egg-shells from which we had just 
emerged. The pale olive with its dark blotches shone beauteously in the 
morning sun, but mother and father soon made away with them, and then 
at once began to give us instructions in the art of feeding with one eye open 
and on the look-out for our constant enemies the birds of prey. Whenever any 
of us saw one of these in the distance, he gave the alarm in a low note, and 
we all crouched motionless amidst the tussocks until the marauder had passed 
out of sight. By great good fortune our family escaped unscathed, though two 
Merlins made sad havoc amongst some Titlarks which had just left their nests 
higher up upon the moor. 
We now began to pay more attention to our dress and general appearance. 
Our dark brown coats of fluff, with their black and white speckling, compared, 
so we thought, most favourably with the more dingy colouring of our neigh- 
bours the young Lapwings, and as the quill feathers began to make their 
appearance on our wings, we spent much time in diligently pluming them 
during the long hours of the summer afternoon. Some allowance was perhaps 
Oy 
