FROM SPRING TO FALL. 



of a bare fallow-field. When he steps out from the 

 cover to the edge of some stream to drink, he is a 

 fine bit of colour, standing cautiously listening, with 

 one foot drawn up before he stoops to drink. At 

 other times one sees him daintily picking his way 

 in and out of the tangle of green stripes lining the 

 edges of the woodland roads, and the great masses 

 of golden orange - coloured hawkweed flowers are 

 less brilliant than his own burnished breast. 



Wild birds of this sort — I mean such as have 

 wandered from coverts to wild lands and made their 

 homes there — are as keen as hawks. If you come 

 on them, they rise with a rush and go sailing like 

 feathered rockets over the tops of the firs, to pitch 

 down again in another place, as wild as the one 

 from which they started. These birds, when dis- 

 covered, are eagerly followed for the sport they give, 

 if only there is time to follow them up, they being as 

 a rule fine heavy birds in splendid plumage. They 

 will go forward before dogs in the same fashion as 

 black-grouse, drawing on and on, until at last there 

 is hardly a tuft of grass or a clump of rushes large 

 enough to hide them, closely though they can crouch. 

 At last they get up, and then it is a case of hit or 



