25-4 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS. 



froose lagging behind, though he always managed to rejoin 

 his company. The Sheld-Ducks, too, proved quite un- 

 iiegotiable, as is usually the case in mild weather. Several 

 small lots were busily feeding on the mussel-scaps, often in 

 company with such very unsuspicious fowl as Oyster- 

 catchers ; but the Ducks always had one sentry, bolt 

 upright, and ere the punt glided within two hundred yards 

 his broad goose-like pinions were spread, and silently and 

 without a sign of warning they left their more simple friends 

 behind. 



By midday the tide was half-ebb, and the mud-banks 

 were reappearing. Simultaneously the wading birds, in 

 their varied kinds, began to congregate from all sides. I 

 think I have never before seen, in many years' experience of 

 wildfowling, such immense quantities as we had of these 

 birds that winter. I hesitate to attempt to estimate num- 

 bers, but may mention that a single flock (or rather a cloud) 

 composed chiefly of Godwits and Knots, certainly extended 

 to a quarter of a mile in length, and appeared to be about 

 twenty-five or thirty birds abreast. Its numbers can be 

 roughly computed by my readers. In addition to these, 

 perfect hosts of Dunlin and small waders covered the mud 

 as it dried, and the volume of tiny voices came rolling across 

 the waste in a sea of undulating sounds. The rest of the 

 day was, for lack of better game, devoted to the Godwits, 

 Kjiots, and Grey Plover, but with only meagre results. On 

 the wide-stretched, dead-level flats of mud and sand it seldom 

 happens that the bulk of the waders are congregated within 

 shot of water sufficiently deep to float a punt. Indeed, even 

 the lightest gunning-punt is, in such places as I refer to, 

 but ill-adapted for killing any great quantities of this sort 

 of sea- game, and I have never yet succeeded in making a 

 really satisfactory shot at Godwits in winter with the punt- 

 gun, nor heard of any one else doing so. At low water in 

 the evening we took a cruise round the deep water channels 

 or " guts " to look for divers, which at this time of the tide 

 are confined to these channels. But these birds were con- 

 spicuous only by their absence. We found nothing but a 

 few Mergansers and a single Golden-eye — both these always 



