42 WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED. 



Lapwings or pewits are very active during the month of 

 March, running hither and thither in search of suitable 

 nesting places. Father pewit flaps his broad wings, sticks 

 up his pretty crest, fusses about his mate, and together they 

 peer into any little depression in the ground where bits of 

 grass, twigs, and other unconsidered trifles have been 

 blown. Or together with large companies of their kind 

 they flap and wheel about in all directions over the upland 

 pastures. 



Crows are keenly looking out, for this is the time for 

 them to pounce and feast on any unfortunate little lamb 

 that may be disabled or helpless. The raven too has his 

 mate to provide for just now, and woe betide any venture- 

 some young rats that fall under his keen eyes. He is 

 becoming rare excepting along our more rocky southern 

 coasts, and in parts of the New Forest. Although he may 

 be welcomed as a destroyer of rats, he is too fond of game, 

 and, like the crow, of weakly ewes and lambs, to be 

 welcome everywhere. His nest, if you are lucky enough 

 to come on one of the old raven trees where the birds have 

 nested year after year, you will find lined with deer's hair, 

 rabbit's fur, and soft wool. 



Not many of our birds nest in March; but the blackbirds 

 are busy, in and out of the evergreens in our shrubberies, 

 and in the country hedgerows, where they add egg to egg 

 till they have four, five, or six. By the end of the month 

 their broods will, many of them, be hatched out. The young 

 of the early broods sometimes help the parents to feed the 

 second brood of the season. With a noisy note of alarm, 

 which the bird rattles out as you approach his nesting 

 place, he flits from bush to bush, and with a characteristic 

 habit of quickly raising his tail when he perches that makes 



