

WILD LIFE 91 



and finally precipitate himself upon it with as much 

 violence as he uses for a mouse or bird. 



Another common bird of the downland is the 

 turtle-dove. A shepherd told me that on the arrival 

 of these birds last spring a flock of not less than five 

 hundred fed every day for over a week in some fields 

 at the foot of Mount Black-Cap, near Lewes. The 

 birds are certainly very abundant, and wherever there 

 is a patch of large furze mixed with whitethorn and 

 bramble bushes you find them breeding in numbers, 

 their frail platform nests placed four or five feet above 

 the ground out of reach of the foxes. It is pleasant 

 to listen to their low monotonous crooning in these 

 quiet solitary places. 



In June the missel-thrushes, after rearing their 

 young, forsake the woodlands and homesteads of the 

 weald and the maritime district for the open downs, 

 and are met with everywhere in small flocks of half- 

 a-dozen to thirty or forty birds. During the sultry 

 hours they keep close in the shelter of the furze and 

 bramble bushes, and when disturbed rush violently 

 out, emitting their harsh cry, and when flying away 

 look almost white in the dazzling sunlight. 



But the missel-thrush is a gipsy and rover at this 

 season of the year in all the open treeless districts in 

 the country. The small breeding species character- 

 istic of the furze-clad downs are the common bunting 

 and yellow-hammer, the whitethroat, dunnock, meadow 

 pipit, stonechat, and whinchat. Most of these vanish 



