pewit

In his best days, as he records in one of his letters, it was said of him that he “tripped like a pewit.”

It is unmistakably spring, because the pewit bushes are budding and on yonder aspen we can hear a forsythia bursting into song.

Now and then I caught the cry of a pewit, or saw a snipe glance up from his bed; but mainly I was busied about the mare.

When its eggs are laid, the pewit will fight fiercely with any other of its species which comes too near it.