At Home with Wild Nature 



hands, in order to take a little rest, and incidentally 

 watch a pair of hobbys swooping and twirling over a 

 reed bed. They were catching their usual evening meal 

 of dragon flies, large and small. These birds fre- 

 quently, but not always, seize their winged prey with 

 their feet and dexterously transfer dragon fly, moth or 

 beetle from claw to beak in mid-air ! 



Whilst I sat there a snipe began to mount the 

 darkening western sky with a sharp ajik, ajik, ajik. 

 Having reached a suitable elevation he altered his 

 course and began to slope obliquely downwards with 

 outspread tail, and made the heavens hum with his 

 drumming. Presently his mate appeared from nowhere, 

 so to speak, and in silence pitched amongst some rushes 

 half a hundred paces in front of me. She had just 

 returned from her supper in the bogland and was sitting 

 on four chipped eggs. 



128 



