at once appreciated the difference. Nothing further noted. Left at 7.30.
September 10th.—Arrived some time between 5 and 6 p.m. Thought at first there were no birds there, but at last located them—a fair number—far off on the outer edge of the plateau. They remained there till shortly after the arrival of a Heron, who flew down near the middle of the space. They then began to come up, several approaching very close to the Heron—to look at him, it almost seemed—and I cannot help thinking, though nothing occurred to demonstrate, that they were not indifferent to his presence. The shades of evening were now falling, and the birds began to disport themselves as before. The light seemed more than usually bad for the glasses, so that I had soon to lay them down, and I obtained, perhaps without their aid, a better general impression. The birds ran about raising and waving their wings, often leaping into the air, and often making little flights, or rather flittings, over the ground as part of the disport, all as described before, uttering at intervals their sad wailing cry. It must not be supposed that all the birds acted thus at once. It was now one and now another, and the eye never caught more than a few gleams (three or four or five) of the flung-up wings at one time over the whole space. It was a gleam here and a gleam there in the deepening shadows. "Dreary gleams about the moorland" is indeed a line that exactly describes the effect. This disporting ended in, and was the recognized preliminary to, the bird's flying off. I counted seventeen (but many had flown before I began to count) as they flew one after another at short intervals over my head, uttering their wild note. Though of the same character, this note, as uttered on the ground, is not the same as when uttered flying. On the ground it is much more drawn out, and a sort of long wailing twitter[1] often precedes and leads up to the final wail. In the air it comes as just a wail without this preliminary.
These birds, then, stand or sit about during the afternoon (but from what hour I do not yet know) in their chosen place of assemblage, and if not occupied in catching insects or preening
- ↑ This no doubt is the "clamour" mentioned by Mr. Aplin in 'The Zoologist' for October, 1899 (p. 437). It is full of a wild sad beauty, and effective beyond words. I too have only heard it uttered on the ground.
