“Yes,” answered the peewit; “that is just what I am doing. Sometimes I play it by myself, but I like it better when there are some other peewits to play it with me. We do it to amuse ourselves, and because we are so happy and have such good spirits. But it is only in the springtime that we play such games, for we are happier then than at any other time of the year. In the autumn and winter we fly about in great flocks over the fields and marshes, or come down upon them and look for worms and slugs and caterpillars, for those are the things we eat. We are happy then, too, but not quite so happy as we are in the springtime, and you won’t see us playing such pranks then, although there are a great many more of us together. Oh yes! it is a game, but it is a very useful kind of game, I can tell you.”
“How is it useful?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Why, it prevents people from finding our eggs,” answered the peewit. “I have told you that we only fly like this in the spring. Well, that is just the time when we lay our eggs. Now whilst the mother peewit is sitting quietly on her eggs, the father peewit keeps flying and tumbling about in the air. When you go for a walk over the fields, you do not notice the mother peewit on her eggs, for she sits quite still and never moves. But you can’t help noticing the father peewit, and you only think of him. If you happen to go too near the place where the eggs are, the father peewit comes quite close to you, and flies round and round your head, as I did just now. You think that is very funny, and so you keep looking at him up in the air, and never think of looking on the ground where the eggs are.”
“Are the eggs laid on the ground?” said Tommy Smith.
“Of course,” said the peewit. “But let me go on. When the father peewit sees you are looking at him, he flies a little farther away from the eggs, and, of course, you follow him. Then he flies a little farther off still, and in this way he keeps leading you farther and farther away from the eggs, till he thinks they are safe, and then off he flies altogether.”
“That is very clever,” said Tommy Smith. “But supposing you didn’t follow the father peewit, but kept walking towards where the eggs were, what would the mother peewit do?”
“Why, she would fly away before you got to her,” said the peewit. “And you would find it very difficult to find the eggs even then.”
“Then, is it only the father peewit that tumbles over in the air?” said Tommy Smith.
“It is he who does it most,” said the peewit. “He has more time, and besides it would not be thought right for a mother peewit to throw herself about in that way whilst she has a family to attend to. When the mother peewit goes up from her eggs, she flies quietly away till she is a long way off. Then she settles somewhere on the ground, and waits for you to go away, and when you have gone away, she comes back to her eggs again.”