320 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



the herring shoals far out at sea, and with gannets that 

 plunge, and cormorants and shags that dive, they share the 

 fishing-grounds with the fisherfolks and the gulls. The 

 gannets may need ten fishes a day, the cormorants as many, 

 and the auks can safely do with half a dozen. The gulls 

 by thousands harass the shoals, unable to dive, depending 

 more upon the fishes gilled high up in the drifting nets, to 

 the disgust of the rightful owners. Often these various birds 

 gill themselves in the nets and are drowned. But when the 

 herrings swim low, the guillemots especially suffer sadly ; 



and, flung from wave to wave, after becoming wearied out 

 by constant diving, and by plunging through the rollers, by 

 and by the breakers cast them dead or dying on the beach. 

 It is no uncommon thing for the rambler on the shore to 

 find a guillemot bunched up as if sleeping just above the 

 margin of the highest wave, and, on stooping to pick it up, 

 to find it dead and stiffened. More rarely the razorbill 

 suffers with it. Life is harder for the birds of the sea, though 

 the sea is unfrozen, than the birds of the land. For by the 

 sea there is always the winter of heavy winds. But not only 

 sea birds come for a space to find food by the sea shore. 



Among the least restful flocks are scaups, wigeon, tufted 

 ducks, and shelducks. The black-plumaged scoter, the 

 ' mussel duck ' of the east coast fowler, hardy and vigorous 



