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CHAPTER IV. 

 FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A DUNLIN. 



I BELONG to the ranks of the " inevitable " Dunlin, but I belong also 

 to its small-beaked chestnut-coloured aristocracy, the inhabitants in spring 

 time of the Yorkshire Fells. There are other members of our family fat, 

 country cousins, so to speak who visit England in their thousands during 

 migration without ever staying to breed in it ; but we, the genuine Britishers, 

 the Trojugense, if we may so style ourselves, look down upon them, and when 

 we do meet in autumn on the shores, we keep ourselves apart from their 

 motley gatherings on the mud-flats, and frequent rather the small tidal drains 

 at the edge of the saltings, sometimes, though not often, consorting with our 

 near relations the Little Stints. 



It was late when I made my appearance on the Fells ; the Grey Crows 

 had robbed mother of her first clutch of eggs, and we were a second brood, 

 but perhaps none the worse off on that account, since we escaped the drenching 

 rain, which had killed off so many of our relatives in the early days of June. I 

 remember admiring the beauty of the four egg-shells from which we had just 

 emerged. The pale olive with its dark blotches shone beauteously in the 

 morning sun, but mother and father soon made away with them, and then 

 at once began to give us instructions in the art of feeding with one eye open 

 and on the look-out for our constant enemies the birds of prey. Whenever any 

 of us saw one of these in the distance, he gave the alarm in a low note, and 

 we all crouched motionless amidst the tussocks until the marauder had passed 

 out of sight. By great good fortune our family escaped unscathed, though two 

 Merlins made sad havoc amongst some Titlarks which had just left their nests 

 higher up upon the moor. 



We now began to pay more attention to our dress and general appearance. 

 Our dark brown coats of fluff, with their black and white speckling, compared, 

 so we thought, most favourably with the more dingy colouring of our neigh- 

 bours the young Lapwings, and as the quill feathers began to make their 

 appearance on our wings, we spent much time in diligently pluming them 

 during the long hours of the summer afternoon. Some allowance was perhaps 



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