SHORE AND SALT-MARSH 331 



The ' tewfits ' of a hundred parishes among the lowland hills 

 may be collected in one of those great flocks, which rise 

 with their innumerable wings flickering and twinkling much 

 like the ripples on a sunny sea. Large summer flocks are 

 often seen on the wide estuaries of the rivers flowing into 

 Cardigan Bay ; and the same late summer migration of flocks 

 to the shore brings plovers into the life of almost every 

 stretch of ooze and salting round our whole coast. Flocks 

 of golden plover are also common in the west and north, 

 wherever they have breeding-grounds not far away; the 



YOUNG SHELDUCKS 



moult now over, they have no longer the black breasts and 

 bellies which are so peculiar and conspicuous a feature of 

 their breeding plumage on the hills a few months before. 

 The skimming flocks of dunlin grow rapidly larger, as the 

 unmated birds which spend all the summer by the shore are 

 reinforced and eventually outnumbered by the main body 

 packing southward and to the sea. Curlew and oyster- 

 catchers reappear on their favourite ooze-banks, and with 

 them come a group of little land-birds which shift their 

 quarters in late summer to the seaside as well as to lowland 

 pools and streams. They include grey and pied wagtails 

 and meadow-pipits, which feed along the drifts of weed on 

 the shore, and may all be found on some part of our shore- 



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