THE FLATS 37 



gesture, as if the bird invoked the ether to bear him 

 lightly on its bosom. 



I have seen the velvet scoter in East Anglia, a diving 

 duck handsomer than its far more numerous relative, 

 the common scoter, the white speculum giving a fine 

 glossiness and depth to the jet-black of the rest of the 

 plumage, perform the same action. The gesture is made 

 before diving, and as the bird often remains under 

 water for nearly three minutes and reappears a hundred 

 yards away, it is appropriate that he should, so to speak, 

 preface his achievement. But it seems more than that. 

 The wings are lifted and arched as though in invocation 

 to the nymphs of his second element, and the pose carries 

 the mind back to some ancient fresco in which a country- 

 man holds out in his extended arms a sheaf of corn 

 before the shrine of Demeter. 



Now and then one would catch one of the waders 

 flying by itself, usually a little stint, drawing mazes upon 

 the air almost as masterfully as the snipe, in its irregular 

 twists and doublings. But the flight of most of the waders 

 is a social function, and there is yet another glory in 

 the sanderling's flight, for as they pass through the air 

 they swing their bodies from side to side, now displaying 

 the greyish umber of the back and wings, now the pure 

 silver of the underparts. Thus there is a double 

 harmony in the process of flight, the rhythm of the 

 wing-beats being varied and interwoven with the side- 

 to-side motion of the body, like a repeated refrain in a 

 poem of a different metre from it, except that the varia- 

 tions are telescoped as they cannot be by the most skilful 

 metrical technique. Or rather the flight is less a poem 

 than a choric song. This see-saw action is peculiar to 

 all the small waders, though sanderling, and particularly 

 dunlin, are more highly specialized in it. A flock will 

 suddenly be completely blotted out as their backs turn 

 towards you, reappearing again in a gleam of silver, and 

 once again becoming invisible. The elusiveness of all 

 these small pipers, the rapidity of their flight, and the 

 discipline of their manoeuvres over the desolate plain, 

 create the impression that they are not birds at all, 

 but aerial spirits visible in a silver radiance but at 

 moments to mortal sight. 



