WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 17 



IN TIME OF STORM 



Years of constant observation help the field naturalist to 

 make, at times, very satisfactory forecasts. The colour of the 

 water passing up-river, the force of the current, the altered 

 rumble of the surf on the seashore, and the movements of 

 birds are all an index, plainly printed, to him who cares to 

 read it. The month of November, 1897, was a remarkably 

 foggy one and, until the end of it, a placid one. On the 

 night of the 24th I observed a movement among wading 

 birds, and heard the golden plover plaintively crying over- 

 head in the darkness. I noted in my log this fact, with that 

 of the flocking, next day, of the smaller gulls to the river to 

 feed, both denoting, as I remarked, " rain and bad weather 

 close at hand." On the 28th, a most disastrous gale and 

 flood followed : it blew for four and twenty hours, the sea 

 breaking through the sandhills at Horsey, 1 and licking away 

 enormous masses of the cliffs, while tide upon tide, without 

 an ebb between, rushed furiously up Breydon, twirling huge 

 timbers as if they had been straws, and flooding houses 

 (among them my own), warehouses, and wharves. I did my 

 best damming and banking doorways and drains, but to no 

 purpose, for the sea-water percolated and oozed through soil 

 and crevice. 



Disgusted, I went up Breydon walls to my houseboat ; it 

 was a fine but wild scene as the waters raced, frothing, seeth- 

 ing, and tumbling, up the estuary. They beat in fantastic 

 waves on the walls, whose apex they all but reached, flinging 

 the spray in a feathery shower over on to the marshes, while 

 through rat burrows and cracks in the dyke trickled miniature 

 tinkling streams. Small flocks of belated knots and dunlins 

 flew wildly round, seeking in vain for a flat on which to rest 

 and feed ; the seagulls had given up the search and gone 

 inland. I had to walk bent almost double. I saw a female 

 eider duck, driven from its northern home, seeking shelter 

 under the lee of the wall near my houseboat ; I could have 

 reached it with a fishing-rod. A marshman also saw it, 

 ran for his gun, and promptly killed it. Some snow-buntings 

 and larks fitfully sneaked about at marsh corners, as unhappy 



1 The breach has been patched up but for how long? 



