7 2 SOUTHERN ESTUARIES 



and the writer, with an old swan and a hare which 

 were sitting side by side on the shingle, were the only 

 spectators. The variety of sound was as great as that 

 of colour. The whistle of the ringed plover, the harsh 

 cry of the coots, and the angry deep note of the male 

 swan as he rushed at a rival, churning up the water 

 with his powerful wings, with a noise like a distant 

 paddle-steamer, rang out through the still air. The 

 gulls were calling, laughing, and crying, and across 

 the Fleet came the song of the land-birds from 

 the poplar-grove behind the swannery. Then we saw 

 the flight of the swan, a sight which the practice of 

 pinioning these birds makes so rare in England. Four 

 swans rose slowly from the mere, after a short rush 

 across the surface, in which their wings beat the water 

 into foam, and rose slowly upwards in Indian file, 

 ascending steadily against the breeze. When they had 

 gained the height they desired, they circled round the 

 head of the lagoon, and from among the great flight - 

 feathers of the beating wings there came back a 

 measured sound like the ring of a tubular bell. Straight 

 out over the meadows they flew, until they seemed like 

 snowflakes over the church-tower a mile away, the 

 bell-like sound growing fainter, but still heard, as it 

 was echoed back from St. Catherine's Hill, and increas- 

 ing in tone and volume as the birds once more circled 

 back towards the mere. 



The annals of the swannery, so far as the writer 

 could gather its more recent history on the spot, are 

 not without chapters of disaster to the white-winged 



