88 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



cularly a starling occasion. Fieldfare tail was as 

 marked a feature as starling wing. Fieldfares were in 

 every large flock. As for redwings, I had not thought 

 all England held as many as crowded over St. Ives 

 Bay in this wondrous stream of life. 



That day and next, grassy spots near the sea were 

 thick with redwings which suffered me to come near 

 enough to admire their rose-tinted flanks. There 

 were skylarks, too, and linnets and song thrushes, 

 and doubtless other kinds of birds, though I did 

 not see a blackbird. Thousands of birds dropped 

 weary on the blown sand dunes just east of the 

 estuary, where I found song thrushes and redwings 

 so weak that they dodged among the grass tufts 

 rather than take flight. 



I saw four or five song thrushes clinging to a 

 berberis against the south wall of a cottage and 

 eating the fruit; and the effect of the bright berries 

 and the fluttering, speckled breasts was charming. 



Peewits, golden plovers, and ringed plovers were 

 swept by the storm into the stream of migration, 

 though I think they were no regular part of it. 

 Whole fields were thickly sprinkled with the tired, 

 hungry travellers. A party of circling curlew swung 

 by accident into a rising cloud of redwings, thrushes, 

 and starlings, and got mixed up with them, barely 

 escaping collision. 



The night of December 27 was wild and roaring, 

 but the lull came before dawn, and for hours next 



