66 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



paths and wagon-tracks that traverse the fields and 

 are not torn up by the plough. Any beaten track 

 such as this old path, however green, is generally free 

 from them on its surface : ants avoid placing their 

 nests where they may be trampled upon. This may 

 often be noticed in gardens : there are nests at and 

 under the edge of the paths, but none where people 

 walk. It is these nests in the banks and mounds 

 which draw the partridges so frequently from the 

 middle of the fields to the edges where they can be 

 seen ; they will come even to the banks of frequented 

 roads for the eggs of which they are so fond. 



Now that their courting-time is over, the larks do 

 not sing so continuously. Later on, when the ears of 

 wheat are ripe and the reapers are sharpening their 

 sickles, if you walk here, with the corn on either hand, 

 every ten or twenty yards a cloud of sparrows and 

 small birds will rise from it, literally hiding the haw- 

 thorn bush on which they settle, so that the green 

 tree looks brown. Wait a little while, and with 

 defiant chirps back they go, disappearing in the 

 wheat. 



The sparrows will sometimes flutter at the top of the 

 stalk, hovering for a few moments in one spot, as ii 

 trying to perch on the ears ; then, grasping one with 

 their claws, they sink with it and bear it to the ground, 

 where they can revel at their leisure. A place where 

 a hailstorm or heavy rain has beat down and levelled 

 the tall corn flat is the favourite spot for these birds ; 

 they rise from it in hundreds at a time. But some oi 



