244 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR 



One must seize the opportunity of a bright, keen day 

 of Christmas weather to see how the moors look in 

 wintry guise. As we follow up this rippling, eddying 

 north-country "beck," we hear a song which seems 

 like a more musical variation of the chatter of the 

 stream over its stony bed. A white breast, which we 

 take at first for a drifted foam-patch amongst the 

 dark rocks, shows that the author is a Dipper or Water 

 Ouzel. Presently he enters a pool, diving and 

 dabbling as cheerily in the ice-cold water as if the 

 month were May. No winter day, however cheerless, 

 raw or chill, seems to affect the spirits of this Mark 

 Tapley of a bird. In the fringe of plantation below the 

 moor, the Grey Hens come bustling silently out of the 

 spruce firs which are gemmed with frost work, — while 

 with whirr of wings their lord, a stately Black-cock, 

 rises from a patch of rushes. Drifting showers, half 

 snow half frozen sleet, have powdered the moors with 

 white, but, as the sun shows through, we hear, the 

 Grouse " becking " and crowing on all sides, and upon 

 the drifts one notes the print of their mittened feet. 

 Here amongst the heather is a grove of small thick-set 

 pines. Approach the nearest of them and with muffled 

 flop a Long-eared Owl leaves its perch and flaps away 

 with noiseless wing-beats, shortly followed by another, 

 and so on, until we have counted six in succession. 

 From the Jitter and vast accumulation of castings on 

 the ground below, the tree is evidently a regular family 



