SEPTEMBER. 149 



ground soft enough to stick his sharp bill into, and 

 often you may find a nice soft bit of turf as full of 

 holes as a piece of lacework, after a flock of starlings 

 have visited it. The peewit, on the other hand, 

 listens intently for the worm moving in the earth ; if 

 he hears nothing he runs a few steps and listens 

 again. Some writers assert that he deliberately pats 

 the ground with his feet to frighten the worm into 

 the idea that the mole is coming, and so drives it 

 to the surface. If any peewit does this, however, 

 he must be a very talented individual, for you may 

 watch hundreds of ordinary peewits time after time 

 for years, and never see the manoeuvre once. Nor 

 will you see them tap the ground for the same purpose 

 with their bills, as other writers declare, although in 

 spring they will challenge rivals to combat, or inform 

 a human observer that his presence is detected, by a 

 series of polite and graceful bows, when the bill seems 

 actually to tap the ground. 



LISTENING FOR WORMS. 



It is quite possible, however, that the natural pat- 

 tering of the peewit's feet, in those dainty little runs 

 which he takes, serves the purpose of making the 

 worms move ; and the abrupt halt in a listening 

 attitude at the end of each run suggests that this 

 must be so, because it is characteristic also of thrushes, 

 blackbirds, and robins, which similarly hunt for worms. 

 If the sudden stop after a quick run was not an essen- 

 tial part of this method of getting worms, it would 

 not have been acquired by so many widely different 

 kinds of birds; and it closely resembles, too, the 



