Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/504

470 Compare above with evening of Oct. 5th. There was not, I should think, one hundred yards distance between the two places where I sat, and I commanded just the same view. I had walked up and sat down equally quietly in both instances, and, as the birds are some way off the road, and accustomed to people walking along it at intervals during the day, it is not likely that I disturbed them, and caused them to go off in a flock of forty-four on the prior occasion. Something else may, however, have done so, and it certainly differed from their usual habits as observed by me. I have, however, before seen them go off in smaller flocks at evening from the amphitheatre. I do not know how to account for seeing so few birds to-night as compared with the 5th. Possibly a certain number of them may have migrated in the interval.

Close on 6 p.m. walked up the road, and sat down at nearly same place as Oct. 8th. I heard the note of the Great Plovers as I came, but only a little, and after six it had quite ceased at the accustomed place amongst the heather, though once or twice it sounded again in the distance. Seven birds only flew by me after I sat down (i.e. I only noted seven). They were between me and the western sky, just as were those which flew by me to the number of 157 on Oct. 5th. I now think that on that night that number—being the greater body—migrated. All or most of the flying birds uttered the characteristic wail in the air.

October 10th.—Arrived at bank at 5.35, and sat down in a small pit on side of it commanding assembly-place. It was the very early dawn, some stars still visible, the very time when the birds ought, I think, to be in full flight back from their feeding-grounds. Heard the note once or twice as I walked (the ground-note, I think).

5.40.—One bird flies from the heather, and goes over the bank in direction of amphitheatre and river. It flies silently.

5.50.—Four or five birds fly over the moor, and come down in the heather.

6.0.—See first Rabbit, and great trumpeting of Pheasants, which continues. There has been before a considerable noise of Partridges.

It is now, of course, perfectly light, and long past the time for the Plovers' flying back, which should have been when I