WHERE WILD GEESE CONGREGATE 27 



digging for bait in tlic sand, looking no bigger tban 

 crows at that distance. Beyond the line of white gulls 

 and the widely scattered and diminished human fomis 

 is the silvery-grey line of the sea, with perhaps a sail 

 or two faintly visible on the horizon. 



What more could any one desire? — what could add 

 to the fascinations of such a retreat? A wood! Well, 

 we have that too, a dark pine wood growing on the 

 slopes of the sand-hills on the land side and extending 

 from tlie Wells embankment to Holkham a couple of 

 miles away. Many an hour in the late afternoons and 

 evenings have I spent in that perfect solitude listening 

 to the sea-wind in the pines when the sound of wind 

 and sea were one, and finding the deep shelter warm 

 and grateful after a long ramble over the sands and 

 dunes and marshes. 



For I go not to Wells in "the season," when days 

 are long and the sun is hot, the scattering time for all 

 those who live "too thick," when even into this remote 

 spot drift a few of the pale town-people with books in 

 their pockets and cameras and green butterfly-nets in 

 their hands. The wild geese are not there then, they 

 are away breeding in the Siberian tundra or Spitz- 

 bergen; and for that wild exhilarating clangour which 

 they make when passing overhead to and from the sea, 

 and for the cra-cra of the hooded crow — his harsh war- 

 cry and curse on everything — you hear lark and titlark, 

 dunnock and wren, with the other members of the 

 "feathered choir" even as in all other green places. 



Autumn and winter is my time, and at no other place 



