238 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



moths, I will mention a strange spectacle I once 

 came upon, and have never chanced to see again. 

 Almost at the very top of the hill, in the little 

 hollow of the fortifying lines, there were thistles 

 growing to about a foot in height, and all of them 

 in bloom; on each flower there were from two to 

 six handsome Burnet-moths, and at the base of each 

 plant lay the dead bodies of others ! I must have 

 walked two hundred yards at least before I left the 

 thistles and their crowded occupants behind me. 



But after all it is the bird-life on Bindon which 

 gives me the greatest pleasure. Beside the Kestrels, 

 whose way of living is altogether gentle and harm- 

 less, the fiercer Sparrowhawk is to be seen here ; a 

 far more dangerous bird, both for the young rabbit 

 and for the conspicuous Wheatear, whose bright 

 white patch on the upper tail -co verts marks him 

 out as an easy prey. I was once just reaching the 

 crest of the down two or three miles to the west- 

 ward, and had my eye on a Wheatear who was 

 flicking his tail and bowing after his manner on a 

 stone hard by, when a Sparrowhawk suddenly shot 

 over the ridge in front of me, swooped upon the 

 bird, missed his aim, tumbled right over on the 

 ground, and then seeing me went off, doubtless in a 

 bad temper. Now and then a still more formidable 

 bird of prey will sail over Bindon. Only the other 

 day he passed over me as I lay on the grass ; sweep- 



