176 FIELD NOTES FOR THE YEAR. 



long as he is within what seems their own especial district, 

 like country constables passing on a sturdy vagrant from one 

 parish to another. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



OCTOBER. PART II. 



A SEA-SIDE WALK IN OCTOBE1!. 



Beauty of a fine October morning Departure and arrival of Birds A walk 

 along the Coast The Goosander Golden Eye and Morillion Plovers 

 Widgeon ; habits of in Feeding ; occasionally bred in Scotland Sands 

 of the Bay Flounders Herons Curlews, Peewits, &c. Oyster-birds 

 Mussels Scarps Sea View Longtails Mallards Velvet Ducks ; mode 

 of Feeding Rabbits and Foxes Formation of the Sand Hills; remains 

 of Antiquity found in them Seals Salmon-fishers Old Man catching 

 Founders -Swans Unauthorized Fox-chase Black Game Roe. 



CHAKMING to every sense is the first return of Spring : but 

 quite as enjoyable is a fine dry Autumn day, and far more 

 invigorating is the first frosty morning than the breatli of 

 the most balmy spring breeze that ever gave life to bird or 

 butterfly. In this part of the island, too, Spring is at best 

 but a capricious and uncertain beauty, and in the course of 

 four-and-twenty hours one is burnt by an almost tropical 

 sun, and cut in twain by an east wind which seems to have 

 been born and bred in the heart of an iceberg. 



Not so in Autumn, or at any rate during the early part of 

 it. In October, the equinox being tolerably well over, and the 

 more severe frosts of winter not yet set in, nothing can exceed 

 the exhilarating feeling which comes with every breeze. How 

 beautiful is the rising of the sun ; bright and red, it casts 

 a splendour of colour, in every gradation of light and shade, 

 in the rugged mountains of the west, whose summits already 

 capped with snow have the hue and refulgence of enormous 

 opals : the sun, too, rises at a proper gentleman-like hour, so 

 as to give every one a chance of admiring him on his first 

 appearance, instead of hurrying into existence too early for 

 most of the world to witness his young beauties. 



From my earliest days I rejoiced more in Autumn than in 

 any other season. " Pomifer Autumnus " calls forth in the 

 schoolboy's mind a remembrance of apples and fruit, ripe and 

 ruddy. In later years Autumn (and October is undoubtedly 

 the prime month of that season) fills us with thankfulness- 

 for the abundance and variety of the productions of the earth. 



