WATCHING GREAT PLOVERS, ETC. 15 



over; the deportment of the courting or paired 

 birds towards each other — their nuptial antics — is 

 of a different character. With birds, as with men, 

 all outward action must be the outcome of some 

 mental state. What kind of mental excitement is 

 it which causes the stone-curlews to behave every 

 evening in this mad, frantic way? I believe that 

 it is one of expectancy and making ready, that 

 these odd antics — the mad running and leaping and 

 waving of the wings — give expression to the anti- 

 cipation of going and desire to be gone which begins 

 to possess the birds as evening falls. They are the 

 prelude to, and they end in, flight. The two, in 

 fact, merge into each other, for short flights grow 

 out of the tumblings over the ground, and it is 

 impossible to say when one of these may not be 

 continued into the full flight of departure. They 

 are a part of the dance, and, as such, the birds may 

 almost be said to dance off. Surely in actions which 

 lead directly up to any event there must be an idea, 

 an anticipation of it, nor can the idea of departure 

 exist in a bird's mind (hardly, perhaps, in a man's) 

 except in connection with what it is departing for — 

 food, namely, in this case, a banquet. So when I 

 say that these birds " think of the joys of the night " 

 need this be merely a figure? May it not be true 

 that they do so and dance forth each night, to 

 their joy? 



I have said that the social or autumn antics of 

 the stone-curlews — their dances, as I have called 

 them, using the usual phraseology — are distinct from 

 the nuptial or courting ones which they indulge in 

 in the spring. These latter are of a different char- 



