BIRDS OF AN ENGLISH GROUSE MOOR 145 
stream is too rapid. But there are sandmartins’ nests in the 
steep bank, sandpipers are flitting low over the green meadow 
above it, wagtails are stepping daintily among the rough pebbles 
by the water’s edge ; and there is more lingering in the pleasant 
chequered sunshine by the bridge to watch them. But the 
prettiest sight of all is to be seen in winter, when flocks of little 
siskins are feeding along the line of dark alders (dark even in 
their summer green, darker still in winter) which fringe the 
stream. Unlike the redpolls who feed and chatter, siskins are 
silent birds, and we are at first unaware of their presence until 
some too near approach makes them rise in a flock, twittering 
softly, but only to settle down again in silence as before. 
And now, leaving the stream and the shady lane, we see high 
against the August blue — a spacious line against a spacious sky 
— the moorland hill. But how the surface of this stretch of wild- 
ness varies ! Stunted thorn-bushes with white stems, lichen- 
stained gorse of the diminutive mountain variety; then a forest 
of bilberries, or rarer whortleberry of Mount Ida ; and on the 
table-land at the summit of the hills we may walk for miles 
over heather — the growth of long years — by patches of dark- 
bog, where grow strange and beautiful bog plants among 
rushes, dry now and brown, among rough moorland grass 
which the sheep have not trimmed. 
The edges and fringes of this mountain are the home of 
many a bird which, although attracted by the near mountain, 
will yet not live upon it. Between it and the outlying wild hills 
lies a valley, Alpine in its greenness and with a belt of larches 
stretching across it, which adds to the Alpine feeling of the 
view. In the dingle running down the valley live the black 
grouse, a link with an older England, and one which should be 
cherished lest it too go the way of bittern and of bustard. It is 
evening now, and the birds will be up on the hill-top feeding 
among the heather, and if we follow them there we come to the 
summer home of two other birds — the lapwing and the curlew. 
The lapwing is one of the most attractive of winged things, 
attractive both in appearance and from its wild, sad cry, the 
beauty of which we should, perhaps, appreciate more if it were 
less common than it happily is. And soon, warned by the 
lapwing’s ceaseless pecweet, peeweet, the curlews rise to wing, 
springing up like Clan Alpine’s warriors from the heath. Seen 
near at hand, curlews are large white and grey birds, with only 
a faint tinge of brown, but against the sky they show as brown 
only, and their sickle-like beaks give them a strange, weird look, 
unfamiliar to English eyes. 
When we begin to climb the real mountain, the first bird to 
greet us will be the pretty blue-grey wheatear with its black 
wings. It is tame and fearless when we approach it in its 
mountain fastnesses, but for all its fearlessness it carries its 
love of the wilderness to such extremes that man and his works 
are abhorrent to it ; and, although almost cosmopolitan in its 
