OF THE MARSH 201 



indicating the incipient cap ; and again, birds in full 

 grey and white plumage, with deep brown heads, 

 are always with us when there is water out on the 

 marsh. On the quiet days they sit the water, stand 

 motionlessly on the mud-flats, or sail backwards and 

 forwards searching the surface of the water below. 

 At times, especially on bright days in spring and 

 autumn, about the times of migration, they rise to 

 immense heights, soaring in wide arcs about the 

 sky. (I observe that our Rooks also have this 

 habit in early spring and for some time before they 

 quit their nesting trees for their winter sleeping 

 quarters). Even in the winter months the Black- 

 headed Gulls come to enliven the dead days ; and if 

 there is one reason for which I could be content to 

 see the old marsh pass away and be done with, it is 

 that certain flat-browed villagers of ours might keep 

 to the taverns which are their natural haunt, and no 

 longer skulk by the river to slaughter beautiful crea- 

 tures because they may do so and keep a whole skin. 

 The hot July sun is quickly drying up the mud, 

 which cracks and flakes like a tettered skin, and 

 already the plough is at work in a side section of 

 the marsh. But a week ago nearly a hundred Swifts 

 played up and down from dawn till dusk over the 

 thinly- watered slime : now the fat black earth is 

 furrowed, and Meadow-pipits, and Pied and Yellow 

 Wagtails, which abound here in the spring and fall, 

 turn lightly from the old order to the new. The 

 presence of flocks of brown young Starlings signifies 

 little, perhaps ; for birds of their cosmopolitan tastes 

 will probably be found feeding and fighting on the 

 banks of Styx. But, where a raised bank divides 



