The Travellers 



witness to the contents of his gizzard. It 

 includes the whole little world of the fallow 

 fields: grubs and Weevils of every species, 

 Locusts, Tortoise-beetles, Golden Apple- 

 beetles, Crickets, Earwigs, Ants, Spiders, 

 Wood-lice, Snails, Millipedes and ever so 

 many others. And, as a change from this 

 full-flavoured diet, there are grapes, black- 

 berries and dogberries. Such is the bill of 

 fare for which the Wheat-ear is ever in 

 search, as he flies from clod to clod, with the 

 white feathers of his outspread tail giving 

 him that fictitious look of a Butterfly on the 

 wing. And Heaven knows what prodigies 

 of plumpness he is able to achieve. 



He has only one master in the art of self? 

 fattening. This is one whose migration syn^ 

 chronizes with his, one who is likewise an 

 enthusiastic insect-eater: the Bush-pipit, as 

 the nomenclators so absurdly call him, 

 whereas the dullest of our shepherds never 

 hesitates to speak of him as the Grasset, the 

 champion fat bird. The name in itself fully 

 describes his leading characteristic. No 

 other achieves such a degree of obesity. A 

 moment comes when, laden with pads of fat 

 up to its wings, its neck and the back of its 

 head, the bird looks like a little pat of butter. 

 243 



