AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR 



A PIPISTRELLE bat is among the regular attendants at 

 evensong in an old country church, and 

 The Bat throughout the service hawks back and 

 in Church forth in the nave, making marvellous twists 

 and turns among the many obstacles in its 

 path, low rafters, banners, candelabra, and a great 

 suspended crucifix. It passes them by a hair's-breadth, 

 and one can hardly fail to watch and admire its flying 

 skill. Certainly the church bat is a distraction to choir- 

 boys. One wonders how it finds a living. It may sleep 

 through the week when the church is closed. Awakened 

 by the warmth and lights of Sunday, possibly it suffers 

 from a recurring delusion that Spring is come. 



A PRIVATEER 



IN an old deer park there has been daily evidence of 

 late of the presence of a sparrow-hawk 

 The Spar'- the damning evidence of lightly-spread 

 Hawk rings of feathers, usually of finches, some- 

 times of thrush or fieldfare, occasionally of 

 a partridge or wood-pigeon. Among the relics may be a 

 few drops of blood, and perhaps fragments of a beak, 

 claw, or shattered skull. But you may cross the park 

 daily, and rarely see another sign of the privateer. The 

 noble peregrine, the patient kestrel, and the lazy buz- 

 zard, hunt openly. But the spar'-hawk dashes stealthily 

 over hedges, pounces round corners and through gaps, 

 and comes and goes like a shadow, only leaving these 

 pitiful rings of feathers to tell of his hunting. 



THE wild garden of a Sussex manor-house is 



now supplying an excellent opportunity for studying 



156 



