20 <I(AfMBLES OF A <DO!MINie 



are in the early summer clamorous with troops of daws. 

 Here the grey rock-dove breeds. Here, too, each year, 

 more than one brood of fierce young kestrels dare that 

 plunge over the rocky threshold which makes them free 

 of the empire of the air. 



Sheldrakes, handsomest of sea-fowl, breed by scores in 

 the rabbit burrows among the bushes just over the verge 

 of the cliff, and, coming out at nightfall, forage far and wide 

 along the shore. The duck makes no nest ; but when she 

 has laid her dozen or more of great cream-coloured eggs 

 on the bare sand of her burrow she covers them with 

 down, which, like the eider, she has taken from her breast. 



Such are the fellow-tenants of the halcyon's haunt. 

 In her hunting-ground among the moorland ditches 

 where you may chance at times to see her hovering like 

 a hawk over the water she has for neighbours the 

 sedge-warbler and the reed-sparrow ; she knows well by 

 sight her brother anglers, the handsome oyster-catcher 

 and the tall, grey heron. 



But her home is not by the water. It is here in this 

 steep wall of sand that she has her dwelling. In the 

 barren soil about her threshold, the bugloss and the 

 yellow poppy bloom. Near by the henbane hangs its 

 pallid bells. White tufts of campion, purple seapink, 

 golden samphire, light the dark ledges of the cliffs. In 

 sheltered hollows of the down the evening primrose 

 spreads its yellow flowers ; and on rocky slopes and ridges 

 linger still a few fragile blossoms of the rare white cistus, 

 that in the spring-time was scattered all along the hill- 

 side like a touch of snow. 



