AUTUMN AND WINTER BIRDS 125 



" We have had a perfect storm of goldcrests, poor 

 little souls, perching on the ledges of the window- 

 panes of the lighthouse, pruning their feathers in the 

 glare of the lamps. On the 2Qth all the island 

 swarmed with them, filling the gardens and all over 

 the cliff hundreds of thousands. By 9 a.m. most 

 of them had passed on again." As to the state in 

 which the little travellers arrive, Mr Cordeaux tells 

 me that, on a morning after an extraordinary flight, 

 he saw numbers of goldcrests on the hedgerows and 

 bushes in the open marsh district of the Humber, 

 creeping up and down the reeds in the drains; and 

 at*his lonely marsh farmstead they were everywhere, 

 busily searching for insects in nook and corner, 

 foldyard fence, cattle-shed, and stacks. 



II 



WAYFARERS: THE RUIN OF THE YEAR 



JUST about the time of the ruin of the year vast 

 flocks of woodcock alight on our shores, passing 

 southwards from their breeding-grounds. Like the 

 rest of the migrants, the woodcocks travel in the 

 night, and usually strike our seaboard about day- 

 break. Upon their first arrival many of them are in 

 an exhausted condition, and lie just where they 

 have pitched until darkness again sets in. At night- 



