Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/203

Rh and made another quick run in pursuit, coming up again, and again making his quick little pecks, but unsuccessfully as before. There was then the same pause followed by the same run, then a close near chase, and finally the moth was caught and eaten. What I had taken for a small thistle-down had been probably therefore (though the other is possible) a small white moth. It was quite a distance from where the bird first sighted the moth to where he finally caught it. In another chase, the object of which I was unable to see (twilight coming on), the same bird, at the end of a run, made a straight-up jump into the air (missing it, I think). This latter action I have not observed before, but the quick eager runs with sudden start-stops between—the head thrust eagerly forward—were so exactly the habitual actions of these birds (as I have often watched them at a greater or less distance through the glasses) that I now feel sure they are usually pursuing low-flying moths or other insects at such times. I had before often connected these actions with something on the ground—imagining a fresh object for each run—and had wondered both at the eyesight of the bird and its apparent want of interest when it got to the spot. Aerial game had not occurred to me.

Later, another of the few birds near me kept running about at short intervals in an excited manner, waving or rather flinging its wings about in a tumultuous manner.

Another one, quite close (but now getting dark), seemed much occupied in probing or picking up something from the ground; but all at once it also made a run forward, throwing about its wings, and did so several times afterwards in a way which suggested a relation between this and its search for food on the ground, or whatever else the actions suggesting such search may have really been. (Query. Did it attempt to beat down a low-flying moth with its wings? But the one that caught two moths—and this was very likely the same bird—made no such attempt, nor did the action suggest that at all forcibly.) In the two other birds this excited running about and beating of the wings suggested anything rather than a part of any process of food-getting. I incline to think that the ground probing or pecking action has some other meaning. Their sad wailing cry uttered all about by the birds whilst on the ground, as also whilst flying.