86 WOODLANDERS AND FIELD FOLK 



of a fox is heard, and this is answered at intervals 

 by the vixen. Rabbits rush across our path, or 

 rustle through the dead leaves, their white scuts 

 showing as vanishing-points in the darkness. The 

 many-tongued sedge-bird, which tells her tale to all 

 the reeds by day, prolongs it under the night. 

 Singing ceaselessly from the bushes, she chatters 

 garrulously or imitates the songs of other birds. 

 When by the covert side, one of the calls which one 

 constantly hears is the crowing of cock pheasants; 

 this is indulged in the densest darkness, as is some- 

 times the soft cooing of the wood-pigeons. 



Both pheasants and cushats sleep on the low 

 lateral branches of tall trees, and from beneath these 

 the poacher often shoots them. He comes when 

 there is some moon, and with a short-barrelled gun 

 and a half-charge of powder drops the birds dead 

 from below. One of the greatest night helps to the 

 gamekeeper in staying the depredations of poachers 

 is the lapwing. It is one of the lightest sleepers of 

 the fields, starting up from the fallows and scream- 

 ing upon the slightest alarm. Poachers dread the 

 detection of this bird, and the keeper closely follows 

 its cry. A hare rushing past will put the plover 

 away from its roost; and when hares act thus there 

 is generally some cause for it. 



One of the most piteous sounds that is borne on 

 the night is the hare's scream when it finds itself in 



