170 INDOOE STUDIES 



tal piece of ground that joined White's garden. 

 One can imagine how eagerly he watched them. 

 "They used to march ahout in a stately manner," 

 he says, "feeding in the walks many times a day, 

 and seemed disposed to breed in my outlet, but were 

 frightened and persecuted by idle boys, who would 

 never let them be at rest." The grasshopper-lark 

 is one of the shyest of British birds, and one of the 

 most baffling to the observer. It creeps around 

 under the thorns and bushes and in the bottom of 

 the hedge-rows, like a mouse or a weasel. Its note 

 or song was thought to proceed from a grasshopper; 

 and White says the country people laugh when told 

 it is a bird. But the sharp-eyed curate could not 

 be baffled: he would watch the bird till he saw it 

 in the very act. His eye was not only quick, it 

 was patient and tenacious, and would not let go till 

 it had the secret. He saw the fern-owl feed itself 

 while on the wing; he saw swallows feed their 

 young in the air, which few people have perhaps 

 ever seen. He timed the white owls that nested 

 under the eaves of his church, and, with watch in 

 hand, found that one or the other of them returned 

 about every five minutes with food for the young. 

 They did not proceed directly to the nest, but 

 always perched upon the roof of the chancel first. 

 He quickly saw what this was for: it was to shift 

 the mouse from the claws to the bill, that their feet 

 might be free to aid them in climbing to the nest. 

 His observation is often of the minutest character. 

 "When redstarts shake their tails," he says, "they 



