206 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



Succeeding warm days bring back a little of the 

 lost bloom, and birds increase again ; — rooks, starlings, 

 missel-thrushes, and some others that were driven 

 away by the bad weather now return to their old feed- 

 ing-grounds. Migrants and wanderers, too, appear in 

 limited numbers ; small parties of wheatears, stone- 

 chats, and pied wagtails. The most numerous of these 

 travellers that camp on the downs are the meadow- 

 pipits. Everywhere on the sheep-walks you come 

 upon their scattered flocks, looking like a lot of mice 

 creeping about on the turf. They have a thin little 

 chirping note as they fly from you — a slight sorrowful 

 sound, yet distinctly reminiscent of their tinkling 

 fairy-like summer song. 



Another melancholy but wilder and more musical 

 bird-sound to be heard on the high downs is the cry of 

 migrating shore birds, dotterels and sandpipers as a 

 rule. They are seen in flocks of two or three dozen 

 to a hundred or more, sometimes associating with star- 

 lings and feeding among the scattered sheep. It is a 

 beautiful cry which they utter as they rise to wheel 

 about in a small cloud over the green down, changing 

 from grey to white, and white to grey. That wild, 

 clear, inflected note has the sound and smell and 

 freshness of ocean in it. 



In warm weather you may look again for flowers : 

 yellow patches of dwarf whin, and here and there 

 among the browns and dull greens a glowing bunch 

 of the small leafed heath or the paler purple ling. 



