104 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR 



country name of " snake-bird " requires no further 

 elucidation. 



Or, in place of the orchards, let us visit the heath, 

 where the gorse is now in its glory. Linnets, crimson- 

 breasted cocks and plainer hens, twitter and sing 

 amongst the golden blossom. Stonechats scold from 

 their points of vantage on the topmost spikes. The 

 Whinchat, always to be distinguished from the last 

 by his buff breast and white eye-streak, is here also, 

 but is equally at home in the hay meadows. Amongst 

 the bare mounds of the warren the Wheatear flicks his 

 white tail and dives into a deserted burrow, in some 

 dark recess of which is his nest with the pale blue 

 eggs. The wild outcry of the Lapwings is explained 

 as we find their newly-hatched young crouching close 

 to the ground. The frenzied " peewit " of the old 

 bird is doubtless an exhortation to " he low." Is it 

 by accident that this youngster has squatted upon a 

 lichen-covered stone which its mottled down exactly 

 matches in colour ? Meanwhile a Meadow Pipit 

 is taking its short butterfly ascents, making the most 

 by its industry of its feeble tinkle of a song. It 

 sings both in ascending and descending, while the Tree 

 Pipit rises silently from the bough of a hedge-row tree, 

 reaches his highest point, and begins to sing only as he 

 turns to come down, broad-arrow fashion, to his perch 

 again. One has only to walk at random and a titlark 

 (to give the meadow-pipit its f amiliar country name) 



