THROUGH THE YEAR 213 



clustered though they are, and collectively of a great 

 weight when green and full of sap, the stems, bowed 

 to the brink of the water by the gusts, always 

 recover their uprightness. Their elasticity saves 

 them from wreckage ; and even in February, long 

 after their work has been done, they stand upright 

 as ever, and so thick in the greater beds that they can 

 hide a bittern from the view of many a man who 

 passes within a few yards. An old waterman who 

 has often seen bitterns about the estuary and at the 

 ferry a mile above the tide pointed out to me a reed 

 bed on a tiny eyot where in winter he had known 

 a pair of bitterns hide themselves from many 

 passers-by. 



This bleached yellow of the reed is, with the 

 intense sparkling blue of the water on a very bright 

 February day, the chief feature of the estuary scene. 

 But there is a third feature, striking and very 

 beautiful the pure white of the host of birds 

 scattered over the water and the mud flats. The 

 swans contribute the larger patches of this white, 

 but the gulls and the dunlins, when we stand with 

 back to the sun, all appear as snow-white birds. A 

 great assembly of gulls, black-headed, herring, and 

 common gulls, suddenly flinging itself into the air 

 over one of the mud flats half a mile off, is glorious 

 to see ! At this distance and in this light, it is like 

 a snowstorm of very large, soft flakes. We say 

 snow-white to express our idea of the utmost white- 

 ness ; yet we might as truly say gull- white. Nothing 

 ever appeared whiter than one of these gulls on a 



