1 8 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



As we come to an angle of a dyke, where the 

 winter floods have scooped out a little bay and left 

 a small shelving bank of mud, we disturb a pair of 

 Summer Snipe [Totanus hypoleucus), which go 

 skimming away down the dyke uttering a sharp 

 "weet, weet, weet." They too are only passing 

 visitors, and do not breed here. We have found 

 their nests, with four pear-shaped handsomely 

 marked eggs, by the moorland streams in 

 Northumberland, Durham, and North Wales, 

 but never heard of their breeding in a south-country 

 marsh. They can swim and dive well on an 

 emergency, especially if shot at and wounded, or if 

 pursued by a hawk. Hawks, by the way, are not 

 common in the marshes in May, being away nesting 

 either in the woods inland, or in the nearest sea 

 cliffs many miles off. An occasional Kestrel, 

 however, may be seen hovering over the marsh in 

 search of food, intent probably in watching for the 

 reappearance of a water-rat upon a dyke bank or 

 the more easily captured Short-tailed Meadow Vole 

 i^Arvicola agrestis). In winter the Merlin makes 

 its appearance, and has a good time of it amongst 

 the Larks and Meadow Pipits, occasionally trying 

 conclusions, not unsuccessfully, with a Snipe. 



But the birds which of all others possess the 

 greatest interest for us in May are those which 

 resort to the marsh for breeding — the Peewit, the 

 Redshank, the Black-headed Gull. The Peewit, at 

 all times wary and suspicious, is especially so in the 

 breeding season, and rises with loud cries while we 

 are yet a long way from its nest. Flying round and 



