176 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



" August 15, 1898. Observed a flat, two gunners, four double-barrelled guns, 

 which the rising tide was gradually a rifle, and a dog! 

 diminishing in area, covered with a What a clamour the black-headed 

 crowd of birds. Peering at them from gulls are making on the flats as we pass 

 the ' wall ' through my binoculars, I them a confused, chattering squeal- 

 enumerated 24 herons, 200 curlews, ing chorus joyously forced from a 

 2,000 gulls (nearly all asleep), 8 common thousand throats. Ridibundus gab- 

 sandpipers, I green sandpiper, and I bles for the very fun of it, and Lams 

 greenshank." marinus, the greater black-backed gull, 



* * * joins in with a scolding kind of croak 

 " August 29, 1906. Breydon fuller at intervals, wondering, no doubt, 



of birds this evening than ever I saw what they find to so gossip over, 



it before : they were spread right Turn your glasses on those dunlins at 



away from Stone Corner, west of my the margin of the flat. You will 



house-boat, to the ' Lumps ' near the notice them busily " pricking " about 



north-west drain. They mustered with their inch of bill into every tiny 



thousands ! including knots, godwits, worm-hole, and with each capture 



curlew-sandpipers, dunlins, little stints, tripping nimbly down to the shallows 



herons, curlews, ringed plovers, red- to wash it. I used to marvel how all 



shanks, greenshanks, common sand- the birds got a living here : I do not 



pipers, little terns, and gulls. Of now, for the fecundity of the red 



gulls there were at least 3,000 " mud- worms " must be great. See, 



common, black-headed, and black- I can turn out half a dozen in a single 



backs." handful of the ooze. The wonder now 



* * * to me is why the dunlins and the 

 I went early on the morning of ringed plovers need to work so many 



September i, and saw, I verily believe, long hours at snapping up worm, and 



more guns than living birds ! A few Corophium, shore-hopper, and little 



knots, ringed plovers, turnstones, little shrimp. And they appear to be at 



stints, etc., had been slain, and the sur- it night and day ; and only seem to 



vivors had taken the hint and gone, enjoy an interval of respite when at 



Most of those shot were immature their ablutions. While we are debating 



birds : and in one small punt, besides this question a little flock, evidently 



two or three small birds, I observed just in from a long journey down the 



