THROUGH THE YEAR 215 



specks were never, to my eye, mixed with the snow- 

 flakes. 



I have so often watched dunlins in late winter 

 and early spring that I begin to think I have seen the 

 best of their dazzling feats of wing. But who could 

 tire of dunlins a-wing ? The riot, yet the regularity, 

 of these feats is entrancing. I never pass in the 

 train an estuary without looking for a sudden flash 

 of dunlins in wild career, and I often catch a glimpse 

 of them thus. What restless spirits ! I doubt not 

 it is on the wing and at top speed that they taste the 

 joy of life to the full. 



THE GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULL 



The estuary under the headland* has other birds 

 in February besides the restless dunlins and those 

 blackheaded and herring gulls that are ever rising 

 from the reedy eyots and falling like soft snowflakes 

 through a still air. I saw the great black-backed 

 gull there, which a-wing has some of the majesty 

 of the golden eagle. This noble bird has a flight 

 which, like the swan's, looks laboured and quite 

 slow. He cheats the eye through his size and the 

 easy, deliberate action of his wings ; but I suspect 

 that, were a dunlin set to race the gull over a long 

 course, the little bird might soon be left behind. 

 The nimble dunlin could start far more quickly, and 

 hold its own over a course of a few hundred yards, 

 but, once the great wings of the gull were set going, 

 size and momentum would tell. Rolling about, 

 * Hengistbury Head, Christchurch. 



