164 WILD BIRDS 



blackbird I often see in the poplar, and hear its 

 loud, cackling outcry after dark once, indeed, late 

 at night. 



Take a very small strip of sea coast, cliff and sand, 

 say two hundred yards, and watch it each morning 

 for a month or so ; the result is quite a long list of 

 wild life. The shore seems utterly barren on dark 

 days in November and December, yet it has its 

 wild inhabitants and visitors. I learnt this during 

 the autumn and winter, at a point on the South 

 Coast. At first I could see nothing, but in a few 

 days I found that there was something to be seen 

 every day. Even butterflies are not wholly absent 

 from the sea coast on a bright day in October or 

 early November. I have seen one of the Vanessa 

 butterflies come straight in from the sea, as though 

 it had just crossed the Channel, and fly up over the 

 high cliff. I could not determine whether it was a 

 peacock, large-tortoise-shell, red admiral, or a 

 Camberwell Beauty fresh from the Continent, for 

 it was too high above me ; but it was certainly one 

 of those Vanessa butterflies, powerful on the wing, 

 and I suspect that the sight is not so rare, even at 

 this late season, as one might suppose. 



When our eyes grow accustomed to picking out 

 objects floating among the small waves a hundred 

 yards or so from the strand, we begin to notice duck 

 and diver. Day after day I have noticed little 

 parties of tufted duck, or of " black duck," as the 

 scoters are called, floating at almost exactly the 

 same point. The great crested grebe will sometimes 



