104 
DESCRIBED BY THE POETS. 
issue of tlie worm from the hole, who, alarmed at the 
shaking of the ground, endeavours to make its escape, 
when he is immediately seized and becomes the prey of 
this ingenious bird. 
Bishop Mant's lines on this bird are too descriptive of its 
habits to be omitted here : — 
Seek ^ye the marsh. Or ere yonv eye 
From far his active form descry, 
Your car amid his noisy sport 
Will tell the Lapwing's loved resort, 
For now from field or sandy shore 
In congregated cro^yds they pour, 
Bound o'er the land, now here now there, 
Or sport and frolic in the air 
With restless wing ; or tap the ground 
In hope the oft-repeated sound 
May penetrate the shaking mould 
And fright the earth-worm from his hold ; 
Then rest they, till the closing day 
The signal gives to seek theu' prey 
Where the long worm and shrouded fly 
Close in their marshy burrows lie : 
Then issue forth by nature's power 
To banquet through the midnight hour, 
Till the grey dawn their ax'dour daunt, 
And warn them to their woodland haunt. 
Shakspcare, we may remember, notices one of the habits 
of this bird when he says — 
For look where Beatrice, like a Lapwing runs 
Close to the ground to hear our conference. 
And Burns, to the shrill cry which it emits — 
Thou green-crested Lapwing, thy screaming forbear, 
I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair. 
The Collared Turnstone. The Tringa Interpres of 
Linnaeus, Strepsilas Interpres of Macgillivray. — This again 
is the sole British representative of a restricted genus called 
Strepsilas ; it is a lively and handsome bird, about the 
size of the Dotterel, that is, nine inches and a half; its 
plumage is black, white, and brown, mostly in large and 
