WADERS 387 



turnstones and a few grey plovers. Examine carefully 

 with binoculars that strip of wave-worn pebbles and grey 

 shingle. You see nothing : yet it is crowded with sander- 

 lings, dunlins, and other Tringse. So still and motionless 

 do they sit, and so admirably do form and colour assimi- 

 late with environment, as to evade all but the closest 

 scrutiny. 



The great chattering flights of godwits are always 

 wild and cannot be approached on foot ; they and the 

 knots mostly frequent the mud-flats. Overhead, behind, 

 and on every side, resounds the incessant scream of 

 the terns, busily fishing in pools left by the receding tide. 

 Head-first into the shallow water they plunge, one after 

 another, completely disappearing for a second, and hardly 

 will the small fish escape their scissor-like bills. In sheer 

 exuberance of spirits they scream and dive, and dive and 

 scream again. Presently there is turmoil ; one of their 

 persecutors, the piratical skuas, has come on the scene, 

 and the plucky little birds at once unite in a combined 

 attack on their common enemy. 



Go out again on the morrow- — -you are keen to renew 

 and extend your experiences of to-day. But hardly a 

 bird is now to be seen ! Ooze and sandflat, rocky shores 

 and tidal pools, all alike deserted. In certain states of the 

 atmosphere, you may perhaps hear, high overhead, the 

 wing-beats of passing hosts far beyond the range of 

 vision : but you see nothing. 



Not discouraged, you return on the following day and 

 may then be rewarded by yet more wondrous scenes of 

 abounding bird-life. But the species are all changed : 

 some are entirely new ; others that were numerous before, 

 are scarce to-day, and the reverse. Why is this ? Simply 

 because you are here witnessing one tiny corner of a 



