SPRING AND AUTUMN BY THE SHORE 



powerful their flight, suffer a good deal in their passage 

 to England, and lie exhausted on the shore after 

 their struggle with a baffling or contrary wind. On 

 April 13th, 1872, for example, there were to be seen 

 along the whole length of the Brighton sea-front 

 nightingales under all the bathing-machines — surely 

 the oddest resting-places in the world for birds con- 

 cerning which so much poetry has been written, so 

 much romance woven ! No doubt these birds had 

 reached the shore thoroughly exhausted, and were glad 

 to avail themselves of the prosaic shelter even of the 

 nearest bathing-machine. 



The flights of dunlin — oxbirds, purres, sea-snipe, even 

 bull's-eyes, country-folk locally call them — which have 

 been so familiar along this quiet stretch of shore-line 

 all the winter are away at last. They come to us 

 towards September and leave in spring for their 

 breeding-places in the far North — Scandinavia, Russia, 

 Iceland, and elsewhere. Dunlin breed, too, on the 

 wider moorlands of the north of England and Scot- 

 land, and from the circumstance that this bird fre- 

 quents the same ground as, and is found nesting, as it 

 were, side by side with, the golden plover, it has been 

 called, rather neatly, "the plover's page." One is 

 always sorry to lose the dunlins and glad to welcome 

 them back to the shore-line again. Whatever other 

 birds may be scarce along the sea margin during 

 autumn and winter, these little dusky-brown waders, 

 with their silvery waistcoats, are always with us. Their 

 numbers seem never to decrease. In some estuaries 

 you may see them by thousands, and their legions are 

 often recruited by other small waders, such as pigmy 

 curlew, knots, and even rarer visitants. A shot at a 

 flock of dunlin will, in fact, as likely as not produce 

 some totally unexpected bird treasure. 



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