236 WILD-FOWL AND SEA-FOWL OF GREAT BRITAIN 



and the name is a very good one for them, as, 

 although not a scientific (sic), it is a comprehensive 

 one. 



As fowl for eating, they can only be described as 

 fishy abominations. On the tide they are most 

 interesting studies of diving bird life. Harmless 

 pranks have been played on unsophisticated people 

 in the way of offering them gifts of wild-fowl, but 

 never did I know of an instance when a Black 

 Scoter formed one of the bunch. There is a line 

 drawn about some things even on the fore-shores, 

 and in my day it was never passed where the bird 

 now under notice was concerned. Now and then 

 the local bird preservers would set one up, but, as 

 they said in their forcible though homely fashion, 

 " they didn't hanker after them." 



For a month it has been freezing hard without 

 break ; not even one day of soft wind have we had. 

 Now that the tide is out, the beach, up to water- 

 mark, is glistening with ice. The piles that run out 

 from the fore-shore look weird, as ice has formed on 

 the heavy sea- weed tangles that cling to rotting 

 piles. They look as if hung with great ice-clubs, 

 for the drooping weed masses are thicker at the 

 bottom than they are at the upper ends, where their 

 roots are fixed in the rotting wood. It is a curious 

 sight to look on one of those club-shaped icicles 

 when winkles, crabs, and small fish that have taken 

 refuge there are frozen in the weed tangle. Bitter 

 as the weather is, there has not been a rough tide 

 in the whole course of the month. As the fishers 



