A DEAD YOUNG PEEWIT 93 



led their nearly grown-up young to that spot, and 

 sincerely hoped that they would be gone on the 

 morrow. But they remained there five days ; and 

 as their solicitude and frantic efforts to drive me 

 away were renewed on each visit, they were a source 

 of considerable annoyance. On the fourth day I 

 accidentally discovered their secret. If I had not 

 been so taken up with the adders, I might have 

 guessed it. Going over the ground I came upon a 

 dead full-grown young peewit, raised a few inches 

 above the earth by the heather it rested on, its 

 head dropped forward, its motionless wings partly 

 open. 



Usually at the moment of death a bird beats 

 violently with its wings, and after death the wings 

 remain half open. This was how the peewit had died, 

 the wings half folded. Picking it up, I saw that it 

 had been dead several days, though the carrion beetles 

 had not attacked it, owing to its being several inches 

 above the ground. It had, in fact, no doubt been 

 already dead when I first found the old peewits settled 

 at that spot ; yet during those four hot, long summer 

 days they had been in a state of the most intense 

 anxiety for the safety of these dead remains ! This 

 is to my mind not only a very pathetic spectacle, but 

 one of the strangest facts in animal life. The reader 

 may say that it is not at all strange, since it is very 

 common. It is most strange to me because it is 

 very common, since if it were rare we could say that it 



