Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/435

Rh which had not had time to make a channel for themselves, water spreading out into spongy places or disappearing suddenly under ground, whence we still heard it trickling mysterious, like water in a dream, and reappearing many feet lower down the mountain slope.

At first we seem to see no bird, except a little lonely Wren who sings persistently, its voice rising shrill above the water-pipes. And, crossing the mountain, Meadow Pipits had been our constant companions; but here, in the dingle, there seemed to be no bird in the universe save that solitary Wren.

Yes. After that patient waiting which all bird lovers know so well, a Rock Dove, blue, smaller by many inches than our familiar Wood Pigeon and of less swift flight, flew out from the rocks by the waterfall and crossed the ravine. They build here in community, and once a wanderer, who often rambles lonely through these untrodden ways, caught one in his hand on its rude nest on a ledge or rock—such was its ignorance, its sweet trustfulness. And as he let it go into the sunlight he saw the sheen of iridescent green on its lustrous breast, and remembered that centuries ago the Dove's feathers of "pale-green gold" had been noticed, and perhaps loved, under far-away skies.

Then the Wheatears appeared from we knew not where, flitting restlessly from rock to rock, and uttering a soft and sweet callnote. Their song, sung so often to the listening waste alone, we did not hear; but we found a nest. For as we went up a little sheep track a bird slipped out from under a great slab of rock and flew up the dingle, showing no further anxiety for its treasures. And there, far under the stone as arm could reach, in darkness and in damp, was the warm nest and four eggs of faded blue.

Soon the Ring-Ouzels began to show themselves, but the eye so loses itself on these wide still wastes, amid the spacious simplicity of great sky and great mountain, that it is difficult at first to follow these little specks of flitting life or to mark them with our field glasses. And, if the truth must be told, in the hours spent among them we added little or nothing to the information with which our books provided us. The birds would not come anear or suffer us to come near them. They kept indeed a suspicious eye upon us, flitting in the direction in which we walked, perching on heather or slab of rock to watch our move-