262 



Peacock : The Beck — A Study. 



cause to dread the heron while he remains at rest ; he knows 

 the bird never makes a spring- forward before he strikes home ; 

 when the heron moves afoot his pace is a leisurely and stately 

 walk. You will soon see the vole again on his favourite stone, 

 perhaps holding- a small flounder or dab (Pleuronectes flesus L.), 

 which has worked its way up the beck over the lower sandy 

 reaches from the Trent. He may be sitting- on his haunches, 

 grasping it with his fore-feet, and nibbling away at it as if it 

 were a biscuit. As a rule he lives on green food or grain, and 

 a fish diet is only an occasional luxury, or perhaps a corrective. 

 Many g-ood naturalists maintain that the vole never touches 

 flesh or fish, but they have not observed sufficiently. Would 

 they tell us that the dog and cat never eat grass ? If you watch 

 a vole for a day you will see how varied his diet is, and how he 

 delights to mix up play and feeding with plenty of diving and 

 swimming. The plant which, while young, is apparently his 

 favourite is the cow-mumble {Heraclenm sphondylium), most 

 commonly called hemlock in Lincolnshire. If you mark the 

 spot which he frequents and take the trouble to go and look, 

 you will see his runs to and fro to fetch it, and the stubble left 

 where his sharp incisors have been at w r ork. But you w T ill be 

 getting tired of the vole. So raise the glass slowly and take 

 a sweep of the reach from end to end. Water-hens, water-rails, 

 and a metallic-plumaged kingfisher, sitting on his bare perch of 

 willow, or darting off" and hovering like a hawk over his prey in 

 mid stream ere he sw r oops down upon it, all come into view 

 in turn, and may be watched in every action, as they carry on 

 their domestic economy. They soon become friends, almost as 

 fearless and certainly as well known as the little vole ; the king- 

 fisher especially, for he is a quaint old world bird, the very glint 

 of whose eye is a living language that must be learned by 

 continual intercourse. 



A much rarer bird on our becks than any of those I have yet 

 named is the summer snipe (Tofanus ochropns Linn.), as it is 

 locally called. I have seen it from early June till late August 

 on Cadney and Kettleby Becks, in North Lincolnshire, and by 

 mid-June a pair were joined by four of their young on the latter 

 stream. But though I have seen them leave the water-side, and 

 fly into Howsham Barf Wood, which follow T s"" the bank of the 



* The part following- the meandering- of the beck has since been cut 

 down, but the ancient wood where the birds were always lost is still intact. 

 It is undoubtedly the last portion of an old woodland ; Adoxa and other 

 species prove it, which are never found in Lincolnshire except in old wood- 

 Naturalist. 



