154- LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



scud along close to the earth, at a great pace when 

 they choose which is often and the whole river 

 valley, though the river itself scarcely ever grows 

 in sound from lisp to ripple, is vocal. The mallard 

 rides the water in this meadow, quacking hoarsely; 

 the loud, sudden cry of the moorhen breaks out. 

 It only needs cronk of heron and whinney of grebe 

 to complete the familiar yet never familiar concert 

 in the river valley. The snipe is a-wing. His 

 startled " chuck, chuck " comes from the gloom above, 

 and once even his distant bleat. This is the most 

 alluring and mysterious of all bird sounds which 

 these water meadows have; but the other sound, 

 too, is full of charm, though, when syllabled, it sounds 

 tame. This is the one occasion when I have heard 

 the snipe bleat during the first passage or grey of 

 night; with full night, though I have often listened 

 for his bleat in spring-time on the marsh, I have 

 never heard it; but the startled cry, and, no doubt 

 though one cannot see it then the erratic flight, 

 are constant. 



By seven o'clock all the peewits of the neighbour- 

 hood seem to have been drawn from their daily 

 haunts to the large water meadow, and their cries, 

 as they toss and whirl, are as thick as those of a 

 gathering of gulls. The hills above the valley, the 

 whole landscape, indeed, have been blotted out by 

 mists, and the air and earth are reeking with damp. 

 A gloomier scene one could not imagine, or one 



