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Updated: May 24, 2025
"John, you are a greedy man, and Jack is not lazy; he does not approve of killing birds; he thinks it is cruel, that is why he has not seen to the traps, so you must not scold him about it, will you?" said Fairy, looking up into the shepherd's grave face, as she stroked the white breasts of the wheatears.
It turned out that what he had seen were wheatears, or they might draw a little on their imaginations, and tell of sunward-sailing cranes encamped on the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, flamingoes in the Round Pond, great snowy owls in Westminster Abbey, and an ibis scarlet, glossy, or sacred, according to fancy perched on Peabody's statue, at the Royal Exchange.
"Why, again Jack has forgotten to attend to those traps for the wheatears; when I did them myself I caught a hundred in one day; now I leave them to him I get perhaps eighteen to twenty, because he is too lazy to dig out the turf and make the traps properly; here are only ten brace this evening, and they are as plentiful as sparrows just now."
There was that season a solitary elder-bush higher up on the down among the furze which bore a heavy crop of berries; and when the fruit was ripe he watched the birds feeding on it, the wheatears among them.
On one side you have an extensive view of the sea, and on the other the Downs, covered with innumerable flocks of sheep, so justly held in estimation for their delicious flavour." The curious T-shaped cuttings still to be seen in the sides of the Downs may be remarked; these are where the traps set to catch wheatears were set.
The wheatears flirted their black and white persons over the rocks, the gulls dipped and wheeled, planed past them on level wings, uttering their harsh cries, or for a flashing moment rested so close that the blot of blood-red above their curved yellow beaks showed vividly; out to sea a gannet hung a sheer two hundred feet in air, then dropped, beak downwards.... He hit the sea like a stone with his plumage-padded breast, a column of water shot up from his meteoric fall, and he reappeared almost before it subsided with his prey already down his shaken throat.
Skylarks, Rock and Meadow Pipits, and, in the summer, Wheatears, with a few rats and mice, seem to afford the principal food of the Kestrel, and to obtain these it has not to wander far from its breeding haunts. The Kestrel is quite as common in Alderney and Herm, and even in the little Island of Jethou, as it is in Guernsey and Sark.
When finely boiled, serve them upon sippets of white bread, and garnish the dish with mace and white endive. Small birds, such as woodcocks, snipes, blackbirds, thrushes, fieldfares, rails, quails, wheatears, larks, martins, and sparrows, are to be boiled in strong broth, or in salt and water. When boiled, take out the trails, and chop them and the livers small.
Vast atmospheric curtains what else can you call them? roll away, opening a view of the stage of hills a moment, and, closing again, reach from heaven to earth around. The dark sky thickens and lowers as if it were gathering thunder, as women glean wheatears in their laps. It is not thunder; it is as if the wind grew solid and hurled itself as a man might throw out his clenched fist at the hill.
There was no counting now on Lord Ormont's presence in the British gathering seasons, when wheatears wing across our fields or swallows return to their eaves. He forsook the hunt to roam the Continent, one of the vulgar band of tourists, honouring town only when Mayflies had flown, and London's indiscriminate people went about without their volatile heads.
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