August Heather 159 



and their preference for the broken fringes of the 

 moor rather than for the ranges of heather. But it 

 is clear that diet alone cannot govern the distribution 

 of the red grouse, for it seems never to have been 

 a native of the south, east, or west of England, 

 either on moorlands of the usual mixed type or where 

 only the ling grows. 



In August the grouse and the occasional black- 

 cock or greyhen are left almost alone as character- 

 istic birds of the higher grouse-moors ; and even 

 on the low ground about their outskirts, or in 

 waste tracts where the heather alternates with 

 pools and wet mosses and stony loch-sides or river- 

 banks, there is a great diminution of bird-life since 

 the days of the nesting season three months ago. 

 The curlew and golden plover have lost the loud 

 calls and anxious activity of spring, and are begin- 

 ning to leave their breeding grounds even before 

 they are hastened by the opening of the shooting 

 season. On the heaths of the south, when there is 

 little strict game preservation, and no such con- 

 centration of interest on a single dominant species 

 as on a grouse-moor, the quiescence of wild bird- 

 life in August is equally pronounced. The yellow- 

 hammer still repeats his ditty from the sprays of 

 gorse, and here and there a linnet murmurs, as if 

 half asleep, a snatch of his delicate song. But 

 where the old and young plovers are gathered in 

 small parties round the water -patches they are 

 almost as silent now as the nightjar that flits up 

 from the fern. Wrens work noiselessly through 

 the heather of these southern hills like the larger 



