AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR 



movement of a head or the glow of a comb; one old 

 keeper, asked to explain, in the name of all things 

 wonderful, how he saw the distant birds, would say: 

 " Why, sir, I just kenned the turn of his nob," or, 

 " I kenned the red on his kame." It is the sheen of the 

 feathers among the bells which takes the seeing eye, as 

 Bobbie Burns knew when he sang of Phoebus, jealous 

 of the bonnie muir-hen's plumage, taking a shot at her : 



He levell'd his rays where she bask'd on the brae 

 His rays were outshone, and but mark'd where she 

 lay. 



" THE Twentieth " usually finds young blackgame 

 hardly bigger than quail, and cocks hardly 

 Blackcock to be distinguished from hens, the young 

 and resembling their sober-hued mother. When 



Greyhen grown, no British birds are more strikingly 

 different as to plumage of cocks and hens. 

 It will be mid- September before the young blackcock 

 comes into his strength, and takes pride in his spreading 

 tail. When fully developed, with his blue-black plumage, 

 lyre-shaped tail, white-barred wings, and scarlet eye- 

 brows, he is smartly arrayed indeed for the admiration 

 of the plain brown hens. 



THE mellow call-note of the curlew, " quoi, quoi," is 

 now heard again on coasts whence they 

 The departed in April, to nest on moor and fell. 



Curlew's The wary birds, the noisiest of wildfowl, 

 Vocabulary constantly exchange cautionary notes, and 

 have fully a dozen variations of their com- 

 monest call, the wild, musical whistle suggesting their 

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