BIRDS 213 



Heath abounds, growing very pale when overshadowed by a 

 strong growth of common heather ; but the palm of beauty must 

 be given to the White Water-Lilies with their broad, buoyant 

 leaves and gilded centres, floating restfully on the still surface 

 of the pools, from which the wakeful Mallards rise at your 

 approach, leaving behind them only the unfledged Gulls that 

 are skulking among the rushes. The flow is a dead flat of 

 mossy tussocks, varied by banks of heather, skirted by a thin 

 line of trees ; — too wet to reclaim remuneratively, therefore pre- 

 served from the tender mercies of enterprising engineers. The 

 deep drains, half choked with water-cress, are happy hunting 

 grounds of water voles, remains of which may be observed with 

 those of field mice in the pellets thrown up by the owls that 

 haunt this region. Elsewhere, the bones of fish, heaps of dried 

 shrimps, remains of the carapaces of small crabs, bear abundant 

 evidence of the gastronomical predilections of the local gulleries. 

 Not many small birds are to be seen here ; only a few Meadow 

 Pipits, Skylarks, Linnets, come in view during a morning stroll. 

 This paucity of commonplace ' dicky-birds ' may be accounted 

 for with some fairness by the brood of young Merlins which, at 

 the time of our visit, have feathered nicely ; two of the number 

 you may see, perhaps, perching on the bushes which have to do 

 duty for the ledges or boulders of rock on which the ' Stone 

 falcon ' prefers to rest. Here the Merlins are reared from the 

 time that they hatch out into the world, covered with a scanty 

 integument of whitey-grey down (which soon expands into a 

 warm and cosy quilting), until the day arrives when they leave 

 the moorland home to inaugurate a roving life on their own 

 account. The Merlin tries to breed on the fells of Coniston, on 

 Skiddaw, and many of the lake mountains, no less than on 

 the moorlands of the Pennine range. But alas, unless some 

 change takes place in game preserving, the Merlin will soon 

 have ceased to confer a wild charm by its beautiful flight to the 

 sportsman's tramps across the hills. It is going more rapidly, 

 as a breeding species, than most people are at all aware of. 

 Yet those who systematically destroy our poor Merlins on their 

 nesting-grounds must know that the damage which the Merlin 

 inflicts upon a Grouse Moor is infinitesimally small 1 Surely 



