196 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



and alder and trees of larger growth. It was early 

 morning in early spring: at all events the geese had 

 not gone yet, but were continually flying by over- 

 head, flock succeeding flock, rilling the world with 

 their clangour. I watched the sky rather than the 

 earth, feasting my eyes on the long-unseen spectacle 

 of great soaring birds. Buzzard and kite and marsh 

 harrier soared in wide circles above me, raining down 

 their wild shrill cries. Other and greater birds were 

 there as well, and greatest of all the pelican, one of 

 the large birds on which the marsh-men lived, but 

 doomed to vanish and be forgotten as a British species 

 long ages before Drayton lived. But his familiar 

 osprey was here too, a king among the hawks, sweep- 

 ing round in wide circles, to pause by-and-by in mid 

 career and closing his wings fall like a stone upon the 

 water with a mighty splash. We floated in a world 

 of birds; herons everywhere standing motionless 

 in the water, and flocks of spoonbills busily at feed, 

 and in the shallower places and by the margins in- 

 numerable shore-birds — curlews, godwits, and loqua- 

 cious black and white avocets. Sheldrakes too in 

 flocks rose up before us, with deep honking goose-like 

 cries, their white wings glistening like silver in the 

 early morning sunlight. Other sounds came from a 

 great way off, faintly heard, a shrill confused buzzing 

 clangour as of a swarm of bees passing overhead, and 

 looking that way we saw a cloud rising out of the 

 reeds and water, then another and another still — 

 clouds of birds, each its own colour, white, black, and 

 brown, according to the species — gulls, black terns, 



