THE PEEWIT. 255 



in the mode of life, the manners, and plumage of 

 the birds. I know not any bird that lays so large 

 an egg, in proportion to its size, as the snipe. 



A few pairs of the peewit (tringa vanellus) visit 

 annually some of our larger ploughed fields to 

 breed; but they are so frequently disturbed by 

 those necessary processes of husbandry, hoeing and 

 weeding, that they seldom succeed in the object of 

 their visit. On our adjoining heath they escape 

 better, and bring off many of their young : but the 

 larger portion of them keep their station on the 

 banks and dikes of the great drains and sewers in 

 the marsh lands ; and the traveller, who happens, 

 in the spring of the year, to pass along any of the 

 roads bordering upon these haunts, where many 

 pairs are settled, will long remember the wearying 

 and incessant clamour of these birds, which, rising 

 as he approaches, wheel about him in an awkward, 

 tumbling flight, accompanied by the unremitting, 

 querulous cry of " peewit, peewit," continued by 

 the perseverance of successive pairs, as long as he 

 remains near their habitation ; which generally 

 being a flat, aguish, uninteresting country, where 

 little is heard but the whispering of the wind in 

 the reeds and sedges, the teazing monotony of this 

 bird gives a very peculiarly dreary and melancholy 

 character to parts of our lowland roads. In some 

 counties these cold, wet districts go by the name 

 of " peewit or pewety lands/' At this period of 

 the year, the bird is bold and fearless, and menaces 

 the intruder with all its vociferous powers, when 



