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Updated: May 28, 2025
Israel's breast expanded, and he strode on with a firmer step. "She will be waking soon," he told himself. The world awoke. From unseen places birds began to sing the wheatear in the crevices of the rocks, the sedge-warbler among the rushes of the rivers. The sun strode up over the hill summit, and then all the earth below was bright.
"Yes, Esther, I know; but the truth is, I'm a bit down in the mouth. I've had a very bad week. The favourites has been winning, and I overlaid my book against Wheatear; I'd heard that she was as safe as 'ouses. I'll meet some pals down at the 'Cri'; it will cheer me up." Seeing how disappointed she was, he hesitated, and asked what there was for dinner.
Then the storm broke on me, and so fiercely did the rain and sleet thrash me that, fearing a cold soaking, I fled before it to the rim of the plain, where the wheatear had vanished, and saw a couple of hundred yards down on the smooth steep slope a thicket of dwarf trees. It was, the only shelter in sight, and to it I went, to discover much to my disgust that the trees were nothing but elders.
Here I was glad to rest. Above, on the giant downs, were stony waste places, and heather and gorse, where the rabbits live, and had for neighbours the adder, linnet, and wheatear, and the small grey titlark that soared up and dropped back to earth all day to his tinkling little tune.
"What, not Wheatear, and with all that American corn in my 'ead? Is it likely I'd've missed it?" No one answered, and Ketley drank his whisky in the midst of a most thoughtful silence. At last one of the group said, and he seemed to express the general mind of the company "I don't know if omens be worth a-following of, but I'm blowed if 'orses be worth backing if the omens is again them."
I believe these discussions worked the cure faster than any ointments or lotions: but Dan'l used to say afterwards that the long days came nigh to driving him mad; and mad they would have driven him but for a small bird a wheatear that perched itself every day on the wall of the court and chittered to him by the hour together like an angel.
There was a pretty grayish one, of the size of a lark, that was hopping about some great stones; and when he flew he showed a great deal of white above his tail. Mr. A. That was a wheatear. They are reckoned very delicious birds to eat, and frequent the open downs in Sussex, and some other countries, in great numbers.
Presently a great blackness appeared low down in the cloudy sky, and rose and spread, travelling fast towards me, and the little wheatear fled in fear from it and vanished from sight over the rim of the down. But I was there to defy the weather, and so instead of following the bird in search of shelter I sat down among some low furze bushes and waited and watched.
And now the fight becomes general. And so, with variable fortune, the fight thunders on the livelong afternoon, beneath the virgin cliffs of Freshwater; while myriad sea-fowl rise screaming up from every ledge, and spot with their black wings the snow-white wall of chalk; and the lone shepherd hurries down the slopes above to peer over the dizzy edge, and forgets the wheatear fluttering in his snare, while he gazes trembling upon glimpses of tall masts and gorgeous flags, piercing at times the league-broad veil of sulphur-smoke which welters far below.
"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.
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