280 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



The north-eastern seaboard is too straight and 

 exposed, and its configuration is wanting - in those ir- 

 regularities of outline denoting sheltered bays and land- 

 locked waters, the abundance of which on a map — say, 

 of western Ireland — give that coast so attractive an 

 appearance to the eye of a wildfowler. The coast-line 

 from the H umber to the Forth is to a large extent occu- 

 pied by lofty cliffs, rising sheer from the sea ; and even 

 where the shores are low and flat, the lines are so straight 

 as to leave no extent of foreshore — that is, the space 

 between high and low water-mark is merely a long strip 

 of sand, shingle, or rock, only a few hundred yards in 

 width at the utmost. .Such situations are not at all con- 

 genial to the requirements of wildfowl, properly so called. 

 The sandy stretches attract a few small waders, and the 

 cliffs afford suitable homes for gulls, guillemots, cormor- 

 ants, and other rock- fowl. Flamborough Head, the Farn 

 Islands, and the beetling grey precipices of St Abb's 

 Head in Berwickshire, are notable breeding resorts of 

 those birds ; but such iron-bound coasts are the last 

 places in the world for true wildfowl. 



Then, too, the encroachment by man on the foreshores 

 has seriously interfered with the few localities which, in 

 former days, attracted wildfowl to this coast. The 

 development of the northern coal and iron trades has 

 transformed what fifty years ago were desolate tidal 

 wastes into busy scenes of human industry — their once- 

 deserted shores now flanked by towns, docks, and 

 factories, with their concomitants of smoky chimneys 

 and the other paraphernalia of "civilisation." From 

 such places the altered conditions and the incessant 

 turmoil of revolving paddles and propellers have effectually 

 banished the fowl — never to return. Such a spot is 



