14 WOODLAND, MOOR, AND STREAM 



glittering in the sun like silver at one moment, the 

 next becoming invisible as they turned in their flight. 

 The birds were of little use for eating ; they were poor 

 as poverty itself, almost starved. Tons of good fresh 

 fish were used as manure on the fields ; there was no 

 market for them. They were placed in heaps of 

 about a bushel each at given distances, all over the 

 land. The gulls soon found it out, and the food they 

 could not get on the water they got on the shore. 

 Black-backed gulls, grey, common and black-headed 

 gulls, came with the hooded crows and fought, gorged, 

 and cackled all day long. 



The vegetable-feeding wild geese, wariest of birds, 

 flew overhead with slow flapping flight ; they were 

 hardly worth shooting ; the mud froze on the flats as 

 the ebbing tide left them, so that the sea grass and 

 other marine plants were not available for food. The 

 curlews, mere frames covered with feathers, shrieked 

 and wailed continuously. Such was bird life on the 

 marsh during this terrible winter by day. A hard 

 blue sky formed a background to the long glittering 

 plain. 



By night the scene was grand and weird ; the sky 

 deep blue, the wild fowl uttering call notes, as they 

 passed and repassed over the stretch of marshland all 

 white and level, on their way to their feeding grounds. 



