322 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



On the shingle patches high above the highest wave-sweep 

 of the spring tides flocks of snow buntings, tinkling their 

 bell-like note as they flit from spot to spot, explore the 

 brown sands. Their quest is the buried and unburied seeds 

 of the dune-plants that the wind and the drift sand play hide- 

 and-seek with, — the seeds of maram and sand-sedge and 

 the low-growing vegetation that bloomed and seeded last 

 autumn, and dispersed, leaving an earnest of vegetation for 

 the spring to follow. The naturalist and the bird-catcher 



who lays his nets hard by the sand dunes recognise 

 occasionally among their flocks the hardy Lapland bunting, 

 the snow-bird, and the shore-lark. Happily these bird- 

 catchers, the greatest of all enemies of our rarer birds, are 

 beginning to decrease. Then there are grey linnets trooping 

 southwards, resting and feeding as they travel, twites and 

 redpoles — the lesser and the mealy — appearing in twittering, 

 dancing flocks, keeping to the coastline, having arrived, 

 perhaps but a day or two since, on the Norfolk coast. In 

 January 1895 a later migration sped them in astonishing 

 numbers before a spell of exceedingly wintry weather. It is 

 horrible to record that one bird-catcher netted 70, 130, 220, 

 330 linnets in four successive days. When bad weather set 



