88 WILD BIRDS 



blue or green, and the hills beyond the bay appear 

 a subdued purple or a dove colour. 



The sea adapts, rather than adopts, the colour of 

 the sky. It mixes and makes its own blues and 

 greys and greens. It is never servile to the sky. 

 But it is sympathetic in tint ; so that when the 

 sky is overcast the sea is sombre, and the cliffs 

 and headlands and the curving coast lines wear quiet 

 colouring to match. And these sober lights and 

 colours along the English coasts are often extremely 

 beautiful. Often I have seen them in this Poole 

 Bay sphere of sea and coast. The beak of Hengist- 

 bury headland, now brown, now purple, constantly 

 changing with the changing lights, and in the far 

 distance the grey white wall of Scratchels Bay by the 

 Needles these are features of the seascape always 

 appearing in some new light. 



COLOUR 



At the hottest glades in the fiercest hours of 

 summer, birds feel the burn of the sun, and 

 suffer from it sometimes, but the dragon-fly 

 depressa never flags. It may not be, like the 

 butterfly, a constant worshipper of the sun. 

 It will fly, and live its full life, in the shade, 

 if needs be ; and it shows none of those ecstasies 

 or trances in sunshine that mark the butterflies. 

 Yet it hawks through the hottest hours, and it is 

 only in the sun that its beauty is well shown. At 

 its birth as winged thing the male is clothed plainly 

 as the female, but by and by a fine blue dust appears 



