1 68 ROUND THE GREAT WHITE HORSE 



eggs and young of the peewits are more easily found, 

 for, unlike the great plovers, they make a nest which 

 an experienced eye can quickly detect, and when we 

 appear on the hill with staff and scrip for a long day 

 among the birds, our first visit is generally paid to the 

 peewits' nursery. This is a broad tract of rough ground 

 dotted with stones and dead thistle-tops, among which 

 the eggs can be laid without the danger which they 

 incur on cultivated land from the modern practice of 

 rolling the wheat in spring. The nearest pair of old 

 birds instantly mark the danger, and in a few seconds 

 the whole colony are wheeling, calling, and tumbling 

 in the air in the wildest excitement and anxiety. No 

 bird, not even a tumbler-pigeon, is a master of such 

 feats of aerial gymnastics as the peewit, and their swift, 

 fantastic circles and stoops inevitably arrest the eye, 

 and divert the focus of vision from that careful and 

 minute scrutiny which is necessary to detect the lurking 

 young. 



The best way to find the tiny creatures is to sit 

 down and wait quietly, and without movement, when 

 the anxiety of the old birds seems most marked. Then, 

 after some minutes, a tiny head will be raised from the 

 ground, and the watcher will be rewarded by seeing 

 one of the prettiest sights in bird-life, a very young 

 peewit. The little fellow is hardly larger than a 

 walnut-shell, a tiny ball of speckled down, with large, 

 bright black eyes, which he instantly hides from view, 

 if the spectator moves, by gently pushing his head once 

 more behind a weed or stone. But if perfect stillness 



