108 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 
to read at midnight, and there are not more than two 
hours when the larks at least are not singing. The 
days are now shortening quickly and the silent hours 
must be longer, yet in the very dead of night we 
hear the dwellers in darkness on the hunt. There 
is the hedgehog, for instance, which calls incisively 
in the stillness with a peculiar voice between grunt 
and squeal. Even in Aberdeenshire the whir of 
the nightjar is sometimes heard and the loud clap 
of its wings together, as it hawks for nocturnal 
insects, or the vibrating “churr”’ of the male seated 
lengthwise on a branch. The shriek of the barn- 
owl and the tu-whit, tu-who of the tawny owl are 
familiar night sounds, and some people can hear 
the voice of bats. Soon after cock-crow one is 
wakened by the rather startling, raucous bark of 
certain black-headed gulls who come to see whether 
there are any fragments left where the hens are 
fed, and they are soon followed by the more cheerful 
jackdaws. Then, on the adjacent moor, the cock 
grouse welcomes the sun; swifts then begin their 
chase—they will be soon leaving us—and their 
half-triumphant, half-delirious cry, in bad weather 
and in good, is the last thing we hear at night. 
Particular places have their characteristic sounds, 
which we listen for expectantly. The moorland 
would be incomplete without the melancholy cry 
of the curlew, with a melodious ripple at the nesting- 
time; in the bed of the stream we wait for the 
oyster-catcher’s alarm-whistle keep-keep; by the 
estuary we enjoy the redshank’s warning call witha 
