HEN-HARRIERS 145 



vanished round a corner of the ridge, but the female 

 settled on a bare patch of ground about a hundred 

 yards from me. Sometimes she walked rather 

 clumsily for a short distance, sometimes, partially 

 raising her wings, she would jump curiously into 

 the air ; otherwise, she indulged in low flights of 

 a few yards and alighted again. Eventually, she 

 tore off a thin rod of ling, then flew by a circular 

 course, low down and in rather guilty fashion, to 

 a certain area of tall heather, into which, hovering 

 momentarily above a particular spot, she let her- 

 self down gently. Four times she repeated these 

 tactics to the letter : four times did she drop into 

 the same patch ; but just before the fourth instal- 

 ment of ' laths ' was deposited, the male soared 

 over the valley and called her away. Naturally I 

 had the line of the nest exactly, but, as must often 

 happen from lying on the same level with it, when 

 it came to walking to the place, I found that I had 

 under-estimated the distance by thirty paces. The 

 nest itself, as yet not quite finished, reposed on a 

 bare space amidst yard-high heather fringing the 

 hem of a raised oblong of ground adjoining an 

 ancient peat-cutting. Two days later there was one 

 egg, and when I was about a hundred yards from 

 the nest, the female rose chattering from the 

 ground. Scrambling up the slippery slope above, 

 I watched for two hours, but because I was in the 

 open, the bird refused to visit her nest. Instead, 

 she settled in its vicinity, every now and again 



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