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AUTUMN AND WINTER 



in the morning by the lightsmen, dead or maimed. Black- 

 birds, starlings, redwings, crows, rooks, and many others are 

 found by the score, and not infrequently by the hundred. 

 In widely extended flocks, like baffled skirmishers, they beat 

 jadedly in. Lapwings also almost invariably arrive abreast 

 of the wind, often so utterly fatigued as to drop down in 

 the first sandy wheel-rut that offers, or behind the nearest 

 stone that affords a little shelter. They are then so tame 

 and tired that they may be picked up. A lady one day thus 

 caught a way-worn linnet, placing it in the bosom of her 



jacket : when the warmth had revived it, it struggled out 

 and took to wing. 



Some of the great salt-water broads — of which Breydon 

 is the chief — have been known as great tidal resorts of 

 numerous species of wild-fowl. 



In stirring autumn and in severer winter many travellers 

 drop in, breaking the southward journey, some driven, maybe, 

 against their will, by the keen frosts of winter, from Scottish 

 lochs and Scandinavian fjords. In the shallows, the wigeon 

 pulls at the long-stemmed zostera or 'grass,' and deftly breaks 

 in pieces the succulent stem ; the mallard and his kin bite the 

 greener fronds into short lengths, and between them they do 



