17 



BIRD-LIFE ON THE MOORS IN EARLY SPRING. 



FEBRUARY, MARCH, AND APRIL. 



AMONG the few features of this wintry time of year are 

 the movements of the Plovers and Peewits, and, in a lesser 

 degree, of the Snipe. Of a cosmopolitan genus, one of fast 

 and sustained flight, these birds are all the " slaves of the 

 weather," and as uncertain. At first their erratic move- 

 ments seem fairly to defy analysis or explanation ; it appears 

 impossible to co-relate their sudden comings and goings 

 with any visible or palpable cause. They are here one day 

 or one week, gone the next. One winter the moorland 

 valleys swarm with them ; another, to all appearance 

 similar, there are none, and while here their stay cannot be 

 relied on to an hour. 



They do, however, exhibit a tolerably regular tendency to 

 increase about the end of January, provided the season is 

 open. These new-comers are not the home-breeding stock 

 returning to their spring haunts, but are a contingent of 

 the Northern race, which, during the winter, have been dis- 

 persed throughout the midlands, southern counties and 

 lowlands generally ; and which at this period, except in 

 severe weather, are wont to foregather on the moorland 

 hills, and remain there in large flocks till the date of their 

 final departure for Northern Europe, at the end of April or 

 early in May. 



Those Plovers which come here to breed arrive a little 

 later. Withdrawing from their winter resorts in Southern 

 Europe during the latter half of February, within a few 

 days they have distributed themselves in pairs all over the 

 moors, going direct to the spots where they intend to nest. 

 By the middle of March this nesting section of the Golden 



