210 BIRDS AND MAN 



approach. It was grand to hear them, too, when, 

 as often happened, they all burst out in a great 

 screaming concert. I can hear that mighty uproar 

 now ! 



With regard to the character of the sound : we 

 have seen in a former chapter that the poet Cowper 

 thought not meanly of the domestic grey goose as 

 a vocalist, when heard on a common or even in a 

 farmyard. But there is a vast difference in the 

 effect produced on the mind when the sound is 

 heard amid its natural surroundings in silent desert 

 places. Even hearing them as I did, from a dis- 

 tance, on that great marsh, where they existed 

 almost in a state of nature, the sound was not 

 comparable to that of the perfectly wild bird in 

 his native haunts. The cry of the wild grey-lag 

 was described by Robert Gray in his Birds of the 

 West of Scotland. Of the bird's voice he writes : 

 " My most recent experiences (August 1870) in the 

 Outer Hebrides remind me of a curious effect which 

 I noted in connection with the call-note of this 

 bird in these quiet solitudes. I had reached South 

 Uist, and taken up my quarters under the hospit- 

 able roof of Mr Birnie, at Grogarry . . . and in 

 the stillness of the Sabbath morning following my 

 arrival was aroused from sleep by the cries of the 



