The
neighbourhood of those hillocks has an attraction for many birds,
especially in winter. Then fieldfares, redwings, starlings, and others
prefer the meadows that are dotted with them. In a frost if you see a
thrush on a molehill it is very likely to thaw shortly. Moles seem to
feel the least change in the temperature of the earth; if it slackens
they begin to labour, and cast up, unwittingly, food for the thrushes.
It would have been easy to kill three or four of the covey, which was a
small one, at a single shot; but it had been a late summer, and they
were not full-grown. Besides which, they roosted, I knew, about the
middle of the meadow, and to shoot them near the roost would be certain
to break them up, and perhaps drive them into Southlands. 'Good poachers
preserve their own game:' so the birds fed safely, though a pot shot
would not have seemed, the crime then that it would now. While I watched
them suddenly the old bird 'quat,' and ran swiftly into the hedge,
followed by the rest. A kestrel was hovering in the next meadow: when
the beat of his wings ceased he slid forward and downwards, then rose
and came over me in a bold curve. Well those little brown birds in the
blackthorn knew that, fierce as he was, he dared not swoop even on a
comparatively open bush, much less such thick covert, for fear of
ruffling his proud feathers and beating them out.
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