THE PEEWITS HOME 169 



is preserved, the whole brood of four will one by one 

 rise, and move daintily forward on unsteady feet in the 

 direction in which they hear their anxious parents 

 screaming and calling, stopping now and again, and 

 laying down their heads, as if to rest and regain courage 

 for a further venture in the open. In no birds is this 

 curious instinct for concealment, and the strange animal 

 power of remaining motionless without discomfort, so 

 early developed as in the young of the plovers and 

 their kin, a power which nevertheless seems common 

 even to the most restless animals. The writer has 

 watched a squirrel on a branch remain as motionless as 

 a hare in its form for half-an-hour, until his own 

 powers of observation were exhausted. If it were not 

 for this method of concealment, the young plovers 

 would stand no chance of escaping the crows and 

 magpies which swarm in the spruce-copses on the 

 adjacent downs. Every copse holds yearly at least one 

 crow's nest ; and the population is seldom complete 

 without a brood of hungry young magpies, and another 

 of long-eared owls. 



The great nests last for years in the tall spruces, 

 and are occupied, like the castles on the Rhine, by 

 successive generations of robbers, who, unlike the 

 plovers, maintain their numbers undiminished. But 

 the crows and magpies are a part of the natural 

 inhabitants of the hill ; and though we take their eggs, 

 we leave the old birds in peace. But the hawks and 

 crows are not the only robbers on the hill. The rich 

 and juicy rye-grasses which grow on what was once 



