no BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR 



of millstone-grit stand out from their setting of bil- 

 berry and heather, or, perched on the old wheel of the 

 deserted lead-mine, pipes monotonously between the 

 drizzling showers. Higher still is the summit of the 

 moor, a dreary desolation of peat-bog, scantily 

 covered with coarse grass and rushes, amongst which 

 the white heads of the cotton-grass wave, and worn 

 into a thousand bare, black furrows by the action of 

 storm and rain. Here grows the crowberry, whose 

 small black berries furnish the grouse with a favourite 

 food. Here, too, is the home of the Golden Plover, 

 now showing the black under-parts characteristic of its 

 breeding plumage. Its low, piping call is deceptive, 

 often causing us to look far afield while the bird is 

 standing upon a tump amongst the bog mosses close 

 at hand. The golden-plover seems to have caught 

 the very spirit of the moors, so well does its cry har- 

 monize with the dreary desolation of the scene, where 

 no other sound is heard but the startled sniff of the 

 active hill-sheep bounding off at our approach. 



Here, welling up amongst the mosses, the sundews 

 and bog asphodel, the streamlets take their rise. 

 Let us follow one of them in its downward course as it 

 cuts deeply into the flanks of the moor. It falls from 

 pool to pool, trout-haunted, at times almost hidden 

 from sight by the deep fringe of heather or the un- 

 curling fronds of sweet-scented fern, then between 

 rocks where the fresh green bilberry shrubs with their 



