Wild Life on a Surrey Moor 



stealth of shadows, for although I had chosen a point 

 commanding a clear view of the little birch wood and its 

 surroundings, the first intimation I had of their presence 

 was call and answer from neighbouring tree-tops. My 

 binoculars revealed the fact that each bird held food in 

 its bill. Both descended to the thick carpet of heather 

 growing between the birch trees and vanished, to rise 

 again in a little while, empty billed, twenty yards apart. 

 I said to myself, " fledged young ones scattered about in 

 the undergrowth," but subsequent events falsified this 

 verdict. 



Again and again they came with food, but never 

 alighted or rose from the same place twice in succession. 

 I shifted my observation point a dozen times and made 

 the most painstaking search, but all in vain. Here was 

 the finest example of supercraft in the feathered world 

 that had ever come within my ken. 



It took me two whole days of waiting and watching 

 before the woodlarks' nest was discovered with a family 

 of well-grown chicks in it. Of course, it was very cun- 

 ningly hidden, but so is the nest of the blue throat, and 

 I had found that in the wilds of western Europe. What 

 puzzled and misled me was the practice the birds made 

 of alighting fifteen or twenty yards away and running 

 through the undergrowth to their home, and adopting 

 similar tactics upon leaving it. 



After exposing two or three plates in the waning 

 light of a far-spent day upon the woodlarks at the nest, 

 we cached the camera under a peat bank and began our 

 long homeward tramp. 



