TH8 FOOT OF SId<BOD 99 



flood that foams so perilously near their sandy thresholds. 

 Up and down the stream the restless dipper sails on 

 swift dark wings ; and the kingfisher, with flight more, 

 rapid still, flashes through the rainbow floating in the 

 spray below the fall as if to challenge with his own rare 

 beauty the very hues of heaven. 



On the hills above few birds are seen at any time. 

 Wheat ears there are upon the rocky slopes low down, 

 smart stonechats flit from point to point among the 

 furze uttering the clear incisive call-notes that have 

 given them their name. But the tenants of the moun- 

 tain solitudes are, for the most part, bandits born. Far 

 over the waste wanders the carrion crow, his harsh voice 

 and sombre plumage harmonising well. A rarer sound 

 is the hoarse croak of the raven, but the grouse know 

 well the ominous sound, and as his shadow passes crouch 

 closer in the honey-scented ling whose softer tone 

 follows the rich Tyrian of the now fading heather. 

 Round the crags of Siabod drifts the soaring buzzard, 

 now wheeling in wide circles, and now swooping with 

 closed wings a hundred feet sheer down, opening his 

 great pinions for a moment to steady himself before the 

 final plunge. Less often a merlin crosses the windy 

 moor. His is a dainty figure, and his smooth soaring 

 flight suggests rather a swallow than a falcon. 



But this wide arena, with its cliffs and woods, its 

 meadows and its river, is the haunt of many shy children 

 of the air. Among the crags that crown the broad oak 

 woodland rising from the river, along whose dizzy ledges 

 clamber lightly the sure-footed mountain goats, the rock- 



