76 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



THE PLOVER'S BRILLIANT DEFENCE. 



To do the plover justice, however, there is no sign 

 of dread in the warm reception which he gives the 

 robbers. He is weaker and smaller than they, and 

 all through the winter he has been robbed of worms 

 even by the little black-headed gulls, which the her- 

 ring gulls have robbed in turn ; but in defence of his 

 nest he makes more than a good fight of it. Watch- 

 ing the graceful evolutions of the gulls at sea, one 

 is inclined to credit them with unrivalled wing-power ; 

 and certainly in loafing through the air, always ready 

 to swoop downwards at any angle, sea-birds may be 

 supreme. But you have only to see how a peregrine 

 falcon, smiting her way to her stronghold in some 

 seaward cliff, will lightly turn aside and strike a 

 fleeing screaming sea-bird into the waves far below, 

 for mere sport apparently, to realize that consummate 

 ease and supreme power of flight are not identical. 

 The peregrine was never fledged, however, that could 

 lightly strike down a plover in mere sport ; so, when 

 the herring gulls, perhaps six or seven pirate craft 

 keeping company, discover the site of a plover's nest, 

 you may see some brilliant flying indeed. Like a 

 whirling meteor the plover swoops and dashes at the 

 foremost marauder, quickly scaring him away ; then 

 he turns straight in his arrowy track and dashes at 

 the next ; sometimes, when the urgency of the case 

 demands it, converting what was a lightning swoop 

 at one gull into a sidelong swerve at another, thus 

 checking two enemies at a stroke. And it is no use 

 for any of them to try to remain while the plover is 



