CHAPTER XXX 

 WILD LIFE ON THE SUSSEX DOWNS 



Beauties of the downs — Gorse — LiniicBus and his tears — Wheatears and 

 their ways — Method of capture — Saved by a wheatear pie — Cape 

 wheatears — Winchats, stonechats, and other birds — The dotterel — 

 " Playing the ape " — Landrail in flight — A great landrail year — Pere- 

 grines — How they are harried — Egg plunderers — The bereaved 

 falcon and her new mate — Jackdaws and choughs — Down foxes— An 

 old huntsman — Cuckmere Haven — Flower life — Effects of clouds and 

 sunshine. 



IT matters not at all at what time of year your rambles 

 may take you upon the smooth maritime hills of 

 Sussex ; if you are a lover of nature and of wild life, 

 there will be always something to repay you. Spring, 

 summer, and autumn have their peculiar and especial 

 beauties, but I have known many a winter's day that 

 held scenes and incidents of extraordinary attraction. 

 Spring, of course, renewing her youth after so many a 

 thousand years, has a charm that nothing can quite 

 equal. That wonderful and mysterious suggestion of a 

 new and fresh existence which, borne upon the soft 

 April air, brings something of the pleasure of youth 

 even to the jaded soul of the town-dweller, loses, you 

 may be sure, nothing of its ineffable sweetness on the 

 fresh and breezy down heights. A hundred signs tell 

 the wanderer — if he has anything of observation in his 

 nature — that spring is indeed truly here. Yonder covert 

 of gorse, for instance, arrayed so magnificently on the 

 stretching slope and shoulder of the downside, is just 



293 



