HARVEST AND GLEANING TIME 165 



fence-rails. All at once you will hear excited 

 croaks and caws from four or five of those that 

 have been at their pickaxe work, pretty close 

 together ; and you will see them take long 

 jumps, flap their wings, and give most vicious 

 digs with their strong bills. The game is soon 

 over, and each flies off with his capture to some 

 place away from the others, where it is soon 

 broken up and swallowed. When the mists 

 hang over the water-meadows, ducks, coots, and 

 moorhens will leave them to come into the fields 

 for their share ; if you stay there at night you 

 will hear the cry of plovers and the whistle 

 of the stone curlew proceed also from these 

 searchers. 



The few pairs of wheatears that still visit 

 their old haunts, where at one time they could 

 be found in numbers, flit and chat, as their 

 broods get strong on the wing for passage ; 

 and a couple of shrikes, or, as they are called, 

 butcher-birds the only pair we have seen at 

 this time fly from bush to bush, perch for a 

 few moments, cry Chack-chack-chack ! and 

 move on again. It is by these short jerky 

 movements, day after day, that most of our 

 small migrants, by easy stages, feeding as they 

 go, at last reach the coast-line. 



