170 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR 



Wren. This is a fact which the bird books do not 

 appear to notice when they write its biography, but 

 certain it is that in lonely corrie or amidst a chaos of 

 tumbled boulders the song of the wren rings out — 

 sole voice of living thing — as cheerily as in lane and 

 thicket. Our sizeable wild animals are now so few 

 that one is glad to hear of red-deer lingering in the 

 Martindale fells, and of the marten-cat still finding a 

 home in the wilder recesses of Borrowdale. The 

 fox ranges high into the hills ; we have seen it loping 

 leisurely across a ridge close to the summit of Snowdon. 

 Yet another bird of the mountain tops remains to 

 be mentioned, — not the ptarmigan which at the 

 present day is not found south of the border, — but the 

 Dotterel, if indeed this choice and dainty little plover 

 still breeds upon the Lake District mountains, where 

 twenty years ago its numbers had almost reached the 

 vanishing point. For, esteemed by the epicure, its 

 feathers were still more coveted by the trout-fisher 

 for the manufacture of artificial flies. An old shepherd 

 tells us that the birds fetched 3s. 6d. each, — small 

 wonder that they vanished- It is useless to look for 

 the dotterel except upon the mountain summits, 

 the land of grey mists, where there is a loose shale 

 underfoot, or in places a dark, woolly, alpine moss. 

 Here, if fortune favours, the bird may start up close 

 before us with a weak, plover note, or run tamely 

 over the patches of stones, stopping from time to 



