His Island Home. 39 



sea. Turning shorewards now, on rapid wings, they 

 alight again far down the beach where the eye no 

 longer can make out their graceful forms. 



Across the sky overhead, with long beaks plainly 

 visible, and uttering now and then a plaintive call, 

 floats a line of curlews. Now they open out in 

 skirmishing order, and settle on a bank of sand that 

 the sea is leaving bare. 



As the dusk grows deeper, a flock of purres and 

 plovers, that your hushed footfalls on the sand have 

 not disturbed, rise suddenly unseen from every side 

 at once, and all the air is full of cries and rushing 

 wings. 



That long trill is the call of an oystercatcher, 

 wandering somewhere among the fringe of weed round 

 the great rock by the river, whose rugged mass is now 

 a mere shadow on the sky. The oystercatcher is 

 native here, but many of the tenants of the shore are 

 nomads, and as spring draws near will vanish some 

 moonlight night, and, disbanding by the shores of 

 northern seas, or in the solitude of Siberian moors, 

 will spend the months ot summer far from here. 



Then as the dunlins go, a few terns may pay us a 

 visit for a week or two on their homeward way, and 

 delight our eyes with their graceful evolutions. 



Many callers put into the bay as the year goes 

 round. Hard days in winter may bring a flock of 

 Brent geese into the river, sometimes even a herd of 

 swans. Now and then from rocky haunts on the 



