IMPRESSIONS OF SOME ENGLISH BIRDS. 153 



in full song after the seventeenth of the month, as 

 I have described in a previous chapter, but failed. 

 And the garden warbler is by no means found in 

 every garden ; probably I did not hear it more than 

 twice. 



The common sandpiper, I should say, was more 

 loquacious and musical than ours. I heard it on tho 

 Highland lakes, when its happy notes did indeed al- 

 most run into a song, so continuous and bright and 

 joyful were they. 



One of the first birds I saw, and one of the most 

 puzzling, was the lapwing or pewit. I observed it 

 from the car window, on my way down to Ayr, a 

 large, broad-winged, awkward sort of bird, like a 

 cross between a hawk and an owl, swooping and gam- 

 boling in the air as the train darted past. It is very 

 abundant in Scotland, especially on the moors and 

 near the coast. In the Highlands I saw them from 

 the top of the stage coach, running about the fields 

 with their young. The most graceful and pleasing of 

 birds upon the ground, about the size of the pigeon, 

 now running nimbly along, now pausing to regard 

 you intently, crested, ringed, white-bellied, glossy 

 green-backed, with every movement like visible mu- 

 sic. But the moment it launches into the air its 

 beauty is gone ; the wings look round and clumsy, 

 like a mittened hand, the tail very short, the head 

 and neck drawn back, with nothing in the form or 

 movement that suggests the plover kind. It gambols 

 and disports itself like a great bat, which its outlines 



