So one lovely day in June the whole family set out for the bank of the river, the young ones eager to learn, and the old ones only too anxious to teach. For what they had to learn was not merely how to find their food—that they would soon enough discover for themselves—but what to do in case of danger; and as they tripped along, the mother in her delicate grey dress, white below with darker throat and breast, and the young ones in mottled grey and brown, so that you could hardly tell them among the pebbles and their shadows, she gave them their first lesson, while the father flew down the river and back again to exercise his wings and to look for food. They had not gone far when suddenly their mother cried “wheet whee-t” with an accent they already knew, and flew away from them, calling loudly as she went. The little ones, unable to fly, did the first thing that came into their heads (and it seemed to come into all their little heads at one moment), and dropped down among the pebbles motionless, with eyes shut. There they stayed some time, and the eldest, getting tired of this, at last opened a bright black eye, and turned it upwards. There, far up above them, hovering with poised wings, was a Kestrel clearly marked against the sky. The little black eye closed again, and there they waited without moving till at last the mother returned. “Well done, my dears,” she said, “that was a good beginning; there was no great danger, for the Kestrel would hardly be looking for you among these stones; but do that as you did it then whenever I make that call to you; drop exactly where you may be, and shut your eyes. All together and side by side, if you are together when I call; and when I fly round above you, still calling, creep into any holes you see, or under a stone or a tuft of grass, and wait there till I come again. Now the hawk has gone, so we may go on to the water.” There was no need to bid them go; had not the noise of that water been in their ears ever since they broke their shells, telling them all the secrets of their life? And had not their mother told them wonderful things of it—of the food about its banks, and on its stones, and in its shallows, the cool refreshing air that breathes from it, the lights and shadows that play on it, and above all, the endless music without which a Sandpiper could hardly live? “You cannot fly yet,” she told them, “but we will go to the water’s edge, and then your father and I will show you how to enjoy it.” And as just then it came in sight, she opened her wings and flew out on it piping, while the little ones opened their wings too in vain, and hurried on to the edge, and watched her as she alit on a stone, and bowed gracefully to the dancing water. And they too bowed their tiny bodies and felt the deliciousness of living.