CHAPTER VIII. Moorland Birds 



IT will be convenient to extend the term 

 " Moorland " in order to include not only 

 the moors, strictly so called, of Scotland 

 and the North, but also the wide, open 

 commons, heaths and downs of the South of 

 England, for it does not fall to everyone's lot to 

 study bird-life in so favoured a district as the 

 North of Scotland. On the heaths and commons 

 one of the most familiar birds is the Stonechat, 

 that little bird which so delights to sit on the top 

 of a gorse-bush and call " u-tick, u-tick," as if 

 two stones were being struck sharply together, 

 and which flits from bush to bush in the breeding 

 season, " making believe" that it has a nest at the 

 foot of each one. And so it leads you on till, hot, 

 exhausted, and pricked by the gorse, you give up 

 the search, while the nest in all probability is not 

 in the gorse at all, but safely concealed behind a 

 tuft of grass thirty yards away. 



Both birds join in this one-sided game of hide- 

 and-seek, but the male can easily be distinguished 

 by his jet-black head and the large patches of 

 white at the side of the neck, which almost form 

 a collar. The rest of the colouring above is 

 blackish, the feathers being generally edged with 

 brown, but a large white wing-patch at once 

 relieves it of any suggestion of dinginess, while 



