208 A FARMER'S YEAR 



called Benacre Broad, about three miles away. Here is a 

 large stretch of reed-fringed water embraced by trees as by great 

 green arms, which gradually grow thinner and cease where they 

 project from the shelter of the land and are exposed to the fury of 

 the easterly gales that break upon them laden with salt spray 

 lifted from the sea. Between the Broad and the ocean lie sand- 

 dunes clothed with coarse grass and tenanted by rabbits, and for 

 the populous coast of Suffolk the view from these, with the peace- 

 ful wood-encircled lake upon one side and the limitless waste of 

 water on the other, is extraordinarily wild and lonely. 



One of the charms of these Broads lies in the number of rare 

 birds that still breed about them. As we walked across the sand- 

 dunes this afternoon I saw two tiny creatures running swiftly in the 

 grass. Going to the spot we could not find them, till presently they 

 started up beneath our very feet, and on being captured proved 

 to be recently hatched peewits, lovely little things, with long legs 

 and large eyes, that, young as they were, had learned to hide 

 themselves in such a fashion as to be almost indistinguishable from 

 the sand in which they crouched. 



All this while the old mother peewit was watching us, and now, 

 in great excitement, she came circling and calling about our heads. 

 Letting her chicks run we stood still, whereupon she went through 

 every possible manoeuvre to draw us away from the patch of gorse 

 in which they had taken refuge. I noticed, however, that although 

 she settled within a few yards of us, but always in an opposite 

 direction to that where the little ones lay hid, she did not pretend 

 to be wounded, and flop along the ground as though her wing or 

 leg were broken, as I have frequently seen plover do in Africa. 

 This habit seems to suggest a knowledge on their part that man 

 wishes to capture them for his own evil purposes. In the case of 

 partridges, which also feign to be hurt under similar circumstances, 

 one can understand this knowledge, since they have been hunted 

 for many generations ; but in the wild parts of South Africa, where 

 they have scarcely been disturbed from the beginning of time 

 for the natives rarely interfere with such small game so intimate 



