WILD LIFE 93 



him again. The birds were breeding near the top 

 of a high down where it sloped or dropped very 

 abruptly to the valley below. It was a rough flinty 

 place, honeycombed with rabbit- holes, and thickly 

 grown over with big sea-poppy plants in full blossom. 

 Lying coiled up in a hollow of the ground I had this 

 garden of poppies, which covered about half an acre 

 of ground, all round and above me, and looking up, 

 the higher graceful grey plants, blossom-crowned, were 

 seen against the sky. The great flower, as I then saw 

 it for the first time, its purest yellow made luminous 

 and brilliant with the sunlight streaming through it, 

 seen against the ethereal blue beyond, had a new un- 

 imaginable loveliness. The wheatears were all round 

 me, some with grubs in their beaks, but not venturing 

 to enter their nesting-holes, flitting from place to place ; 

 some remaining in one place to keep watch, others 

 going and coming. But as time went on, and I still 

 refused to stir, they grew tired of waiting, and of 

 uttering their chacking alarm-note and flirting their 

 pretty tails, and began carrying food into the burrows : 

 two of these were within a dozen yards of my resting- 

 place. But even after they had quieted down, at 

 intervals one of the birds would rise up and suspend 

 himself motionless in the air and watch me for some 

 moments. Down at the foot of the hill below me 

 some of the birds were to be seen hunting for insects 

 on the lawn-like turf, and as they flew slowly over it, 

 close to the surface, on rapidly beating wings, they 



