THROUGH THE YEAR 223 



starling host is done towards evening. The dunlin 

 flock may repeat its exercise later in the day, but, 

 going out to the old beaches at two or three o'clock, 

 I have found the birds sitting and dozing in the sun, 

 their heads almost buried in feathers, every breast 

 to the breeze. 



When first I searched for the dunlins in the after- 

 noon, I feared I was too late that they had already 

 swung off to their feeding-grounds, the great, 

 gleaming harbour mud-flats. For some time I could 

 see no sign of them in the air or on the ground. But 

 just as I was giving up the search, I saw spread along 

 twenty yards of one of the beaches a sheet of what 

 seemed, two hundred yards away, to be large pure 

 white dots. The regular spaces between the dots 

 told me they could hardly be pebbles. Besides they 

 looked too white for white pebbles, which, on these 

 old beaches, are always smudged by dark, flat 

 lichen growths, a kind of mould. 



Rather, they looked like a company of some short 

 stemmed, bold flowering plants. They might have 

 passed for snowdrops, were snowdrops large enough. 

 In a garden I once grew large white anemones which 

 bloomed in May, and the dots on the islet beach 

 looked not unlike those flowers. Such a sheet of 

 neat white dots, if seen on an Alpine field, would pass 

 at a little distance for flowers. As I stood and 

 watched, puzzled as to what they really were, a little 

 pointed wing flung up, then another and another. 

 I knew then that the white dots were the dunlin 

 flock. A few yards nearer, and I could see other 



