18 LLANDDWYN 



burrows it shared with rabbits, and running so 

 rapidly and on so sustained a course, that few people 

 could have detected that it did not truly run at all, 

 but hopped. With head and breast so depressed 

 that it must needs topple forward on the ground but 

 for the rapidly recurring hop, it follows a long course, 

 like a running Ringed-plover, at the end of which it 

 stops suddenly, and standing almost upright, rocks 

 its tail and bobs its head. Then with a quick 

 traverse, it repeats these gestures, ere it scuds in low 

 flight above the ground, its white tail and hind parts 

 marking the line of its retreat. 



Occasionally we came upon levelled areas such as 

 only water leaves, covered with a flaky sediment, 

 itself blotched with highly coloured lichens. Here 

 the Lapwing bides ; the sand is not for him. Here, 

 too, the carrion crow comes in ones and twos ; he 

 cares not for company. He is so used to being 

 alone that when one appears on a ridge overlooking 

 his haunt, he seems for a moment to doubt one's 

 presence ; then, as with sudden conviction, he gathers 

 himself up with a loud "Kaar!" hugs the flat as he 

 flies, and cutting up the face of a sandhill, doubles 

 down beyond, and comes not again to earth within 

 half a mile. 



If, upon entering the Warren, I had been asked 

 what birds I should be likely to meet there, I should 

 scarcely have said the Nightjar, Frequently as this 

 bird occurs in the higher, heath-like tracts of 

 Anglesey, I should not have expected to flush it 

 from bare sand among the dunes. And yet, coming 

 over a ridge, I put up a pair that had couched in the 

 sun upon open sand. Without sound of alarm, one 



