SPRING AND AUTUMN BY THE SHORE 



gulls, which presently rise noisily and pass us on their 

 way to the cliffs in which they shelter. Some few are 

 within shot, but they are suffered to pass untouched. 

 One more bird, a turnstone, we sight before setting 

 our faces homeward. The bird is digging vigorously 

 at some object — probably a sunken shell-fish — beneath 

 the sand, and allows the youthful gunner to approach 

 within forty paces. In the lad's eye this is a prize of 

 value indeed. He is over-eager, and fires hurriedly, 

 and I am not surprised to see the bird go off unhurt. 

 The turnstone is another of the wanderers from the 

 North which touch our littoral in spring and autumn, 

 fare far southward for the winter, and are well known 

 on South African shores. 



Not long before we quit the sands and strike inland 

 we note a single whitish bird, just upon the edge of the 

 now rising tide. We approach nearer, and I see that 

 it is a tern — sea-swallows they are more often called 

 by the long-shore folks. But it is a tern with which 

 I am not familiar. I take the gun. Perhaps I am 

 wrong, but the flesh of the collector is weak, and it is 

 a hard thing to let a new and apparently unknown bird 

 go unidentified. At length the tern rises lightly upon 

 those sharp and sweeping wings and wheels ofi^. A 

 single shot brings it down into the shallow surf, 

 whence it is rapidly retrieved by the eager lad at my 

 side. Here, then, is the rarest bird of the morning 

 ramble, a young bird of the year of the black tern. 

 The dark colouring assumed by these birds is only 

 beginning to show upon the upper plumage, the breast 

 is pure snow-white. An interesting prize this, not 

 commonly seen upon the Sussex shore. The black 

 tern is not the least remarkable of this most elegant 

 family of sea-birds, and belongs to the small group 

 known as marsh terns. Formerly this bird bred freely 



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