LONDON BIRDS 47 



roughly built of faded fronds of rushes and grasses) 

 look very inconveniently crowded together, often 

 touching. Possibly, in the absence of saintly com- 

 mands limiting the crofts, the secret of the charm may 

 be found in the scent of ancestral guano, which on the 

 Hearth, as elsewhere under like conditions, is apparent 

 even to unsympathetic nostrils. 



For the first few hundred yards of the row, which 

 usually begins at the end of the Mere furthest from 

 the nests, there is little to give a visitor any idea of the 

 treat in store for him. A few Wild Ducks show them- 

 selves cautiously, and an occasional Coot or Moorhen 

 shunts himself out of the line of the boat, jerking 

 himself laboriously through the tangled weed to save 

 the exertion of rising type of the 'lazy people' who 

 'take most trouble.' But, as the breeding-ground is 

 neared, the number of Gulls in the air increases at 

 every stroke of the oars, until, opposite the nests, the 

 sky is clouded with wings, and the cries of the 

 frightened birds, which before had seemed only the 

 peaceful, low-toned murmur of a distant rookery, rises 

 in volume and pitch to a sharp, almost deafening hum, 

 as of an angry swarm of gigantic bees. It is impossible 

 in words to convey any adequate idea of the beauty 

 and fascination of the scene. Thousands of excited 

 birds are on the wing together, crossing and recrossing, 

 swooping almost down to the boat, at one moment 

 showing white against a dark background of wood, and 

 the next, as they soar clear of the line of the tree- 

 tops, black in sharp-cut silhouette against the sky. 



