ore I could
reach the spot, but sometimes the hawk had to leave its prize behind
it.

I was watching a number of young chicks feeding outside the coops
containing the mother hens, when there suddenly arose a great
disturbance, and a hawk, which had pounced upon a chick, was seen
flying away with it in its talons. Its flight was impeded by the
weight of the chicken, and we gave chase shouting. Flying very low it
carried its prey to the further side of the meadow, but, seeing that
it could not get quickly through the trees there, it dropped the
chicken and escaped; we picked up the poor frightened infant, which
was not injured, and restored it to a perturbed but joyful mother. "As
yaller as a kite's claw," is a simile one hears in the country, and it
is common to both Hampshire and Worcestershire.

I never saw the wheatear in Worcestershire, but here I notice several
pairs on the moors in summer. They were once very plentiful on the
Sussex Downs and seaside cliffs, and as a boy walking from my first
school at Rottingdean to visit my people at Brighton, from Saturday to
Sunday night, I have passed hundreds of traps consisting of
rectangular holes cut in the turf, having horsehair nooses inside, set
by the shepherds who took thousands of wheatears to the poulterers'
shops in the town. They were then considered a great delicacy. Other
professional bird-catchers operated with large clap-nets, and a string
attached in the hands of the catcher some distance away. When they
were after larks a revolving mirror, flashing in the sun, was
considered very attractive; I suppose the birds approached from
motives of curiosity.[3] Many thousands were caught for the London and
Brighton markets for lark pies and puddings, a wicked bathos, when we
remember Wordsworth's lines:

"There is madness about thee, and joy divine
In that song of thine."

One severe winter an immense flock of golden plovers haunted my land
and neighbouring farms for some weeks, but they were exceedingly shy,
and being perfect strangers, they were difficult to identify, until I
brought one down by a very long shot, and we could see what a
beautiful bird it was. We could always tell when really severe winter
weather was coming, by the flocks of wild geese that passed overhead
in V-shaped formation. They were said to be leaving the mouth of the
Humber and the East Coast for the warmer shores of the Bristol
Channel, evidently quite aware that the latter