342 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



laden wherry now and then passes along with its red-capped 

 wherryman shouting a greeting, or offering a comment on the 

 weather. At first perhaps, as you pass up the river, there is 

 little bird-life observable on the waters, an unhappy moorhen 

 croaks discontent from a ditch behind the banks, a hungry 

 gull or two silently pursue the bend of the river, hoping to 

 find something edible in the shape of a small dead bird or the 

 carcase of a tiny drowned mammal. A few meadow pipits 

 cheep mournfully as they take to erratic flight from the 

 herbage, and a flock of grey linnets rise from a patch of 



white goosefoot, a plant 

 which grows abundantly on 

 newly thrown marsh soil, 

 and assumes a creeping 

 habit. Odd snow buntings 

 are disturbed from that same 

 favourite weed, which even 

 attracts to the waterside the 

 covert -haunting pheasants. 

 Lapwings, wailing on the marsh-lands, are fairly numerous, 

 and an occasional bunch of golden plovers is seen. But 

 the merry reed and sedge warblers, so familiar from their 

 confidential manners and pleasant snatches of song to 

 yachting folk in summer days, are absent. The ' visping ' of 

 the snipe, the babbling voices of the wild-fowl, and the harsh 

 grating notes of the hooded crows, prowling around, like 

 camp followers, seeking to despoil the dead and wounded, 

 become familiar, and are, perhaps, more in keeping with the 

 rougher spirit of winter. The creaking of the pump-mills 

 and the sighing of the winds through the reed beds make 

 appropriate wintry music. Let any one who wishes to see a 

 characteristic winter scene visit such a place as the ' Sounds,' 

 where dark pools, reflecting the sombre cloud, nestle among 



