THE HIBERNATORS 



the pathetically threadbare tricks of fluttering as if 

 hurt, to lure intruders from its young. 



AT the sign of the poulterer the golden plover takes the 

 eye, with its gold-speckled plumage, which 

 Golden on its native moor is at one with the 

 Plover heather, grasses, green turf, black peat and 

 white cotton-grass. Marshes, mudflats, and 

 sandbanks are now its haunt, and to our coasts come 

 migratory plover forces from northern climes, in waves 

 that may flow on far to the south of the equator. Their 

 whistling cry is a pleasant and musical sound, without 

 the mournfulness of the peewit's wail. Golden plover 

 may be tame on arriving at the coast, but grow wary 

 if their life is sought, and will hardly stay in the same 

 parish as the man with a gun. 



THE HIBERNATORS 



THE dormouse, fat on nuts and acorns, has retired for 

 the Winter, judging by a dozen inhabited 

 The nests found in one small thicket. There is 



Seventh good proof, though the point is disputed, 

 Sleeper that he lays up a store of nuts against the 

 day of waking. In the oval grass-ball that 

 is his dormitory he fits, wound in his tail, as closely as 

 the yolk of an egg in the shell, and his sleep -is twin- 

 brother of death. All his ways are ways that are dark; 

 he sleeps for two-thirds of his life, and when awake 

 hunts mostly by twilight and in the night, keeping to 

 cover where he is safe from owls. It seems a dull life; 

 as dull as that of his cousin, the squirrel, seems merry. 



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