SOFT NOTE OF THE GOLDEN PLOVER 185 
summer note of the golden plovei to the lovei of 
birds and of Nature. As you listen to it, now 
distant, now nearer and near, and see the birds with 
short flights approaching as if to greet you, though 
in reality with more fear than confidence, with 
anxiety and apprehension, the bright sunshine that 
glances on their jetty breasts is faintly obscured by 
the white vapours that have crept up from the 
western valley, and presently all around us is 
suffused with an opaline light, into the confines of 
which a bird is dimly seen to advance, then anothei, 
and a third. Who could represent the scene on 
canvas or card?—a hollow hemisphere of white 
shining mist, on which are depicted two dark 
human figures, their heads surrounded with a 
radiant halo, and these black-breasted golden 
plovers, magnified to twice their natural size, and 
gazing upon us, each from its mossy tuft. It is as 
if two mortals had a conference on the heath with 
three celestial messengers—and so they have. Pre¬ 
sently a breeze rolls away the mist, and discloses a 
number of those watchful sentinels, each on his 
mound of faded moss, and all emitting their mellow 
cries the moment we offer to advance. They are 
males, whose mates are brooding over their eggs, 
or leading their down-clad and toddling chicks 
among the, to them, pleasant peat-bogs that inter¬ 
vene between the high banks, clad with luxuriant 
heath, not yet recovered from the effects of the 
winter frosts, and little meadows of cotton-grass, 
white as the snow-wreaths that lie on the distant 
