214 WILD BIRDS 



bright February day over the blue water : the 

 pureness and shine of it are splendid. 



Dunlins at their exercises usually pass swiftly 

 from white to grey, and almost to black, changing 

 with each precise swerve and cut. But at the 

 estuary I saw the dunlins cut an entirely white 

 figure. Of all dunlin effects that I have seen this 

 was the most strange and lovely. They rose in two 

 parties from the harbour bar, and keeping a few feet 

 above water, zigzagged up the estuary for a mile. 

 Then they swung round, and, still travelling low, 

 zigzagged across the warren and round the edge of the 

 great headland, and so out to sea. Here I lost sight 

 of them. The strange feature of this course, in 

 which the dunlins rioted in speed, was that the birds 

 appeared throughout as shining white, even after 

 they had swerved round at the close of their course 

 up the estuary and torn out to sea. 



A long, narrow ribbon of pure white specks 

 moving at highest dunlin speed over a course of a 

 full mile and a half, with a second ribbon close on 

 the wings of the first, is something to see ! 



I marked the gulls at the moment of the dunlin 

 start, tumbling about as a fall of large snowflakes 

 over one of the eyots, and saw that a moment or 

 two later the dunlins must pass between me and 

 the gulls. And pass the whole of both marvellous 

 dunlin regiments did, the white specks travelling 

 clean across the snowflake fall of gulls in the 

 further distance ; though, through the high pace 

 at which the dunlin lines shot across them, the 



