244 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



for a distance of five or six hundred yards from the 

 ground. 



In September and October the resident peewits are 

 joined by others of their kind ; and in the valley of the 

 Cuckmere, a favourite wintering ground, you may see 

 a flock of as many as two thousand birds, looking at 

 a distance, when they are up and flying round, like 

 a vast cloud of starlings. No bird appears to take 

 greater pleasure in the exercise of his own powers of 

 flight than the peewit. Flying is to him like riding, 

 cycling, rowing or sailing, and skating (I wish I could 

 add ballooning or rushing about in a flying-machine) 

 to ourselves. It is his sport; and during the spring 

 and summer season, when peewits live in pairs or 

 small parties, he spends a great part of his time in 

 those quite useless, but doubtless exhilarating, displays 

 which we are never tired of watching. Rising to a 

 considerable height in the air, he lets himself go, with 

 the determination apparently of breaking the peewit 

 record; that is to say, of rushing downwards in the 

 approved suicidally insane manner, with sudden 

 doublings this way and that, and other violent eccen- 

 tric motions designed to make him lose his head ; and 

 finally to come at fullest speed within an inch, or as 

 much less than an inch as he can, of dashing himself 

 into a pulp on the ground below. 



Blake, in his tiger song, exclaims — 



And what shoulder, and what art, 

 Could twist the sinews of thy heart ! 



