128 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



tide is out, and feed by day in the marshes and 

 mudflats. Such is the routine. But wild weather 

 makes many exceptions. Then the ducks will often 

 go in much earlier; and the waders, finding the 

 shore too rough, will return to the mudflats and 

 spend the night there, resting or feeding. I shall 

 never forget one evening in the West which sent 

 the curlews, and with them the gulls and dunlins, 

 back inland a few minutes after they had come out 

 to roost on the sands. 



The estuary suddenly grew black as the Styx, 

 though it was scarcely time for the dusk ; and back 

 to the mudflats drifted the gulls, and, arrow-quick 

 with the raging wind, the dunlins and sanderlings 

 darted to the spot they had just left. The wind 

 was too mad for any bird to sleep by the open 

 sea that evening, though later at night, when the 

 storm lessened, they may have come out again. 



I saw two flocks of dunlin shoot back from the shore 

 up the black river, and they moved like swifts migrat- 

 ing at highest speed. The dunlin flock by the shore 

 and up the estuaries of southern England is a beauti- 

 ful sight in winter. It flies with all the precision 

 and air-ease of a flock of starlings ; and that wild 

 evening in the snow-blast the flock simply flashed 

 by, riding full on the wind. 



A few minutes later it grew to a savage storm, 

 and there was a certain threatening personality about 

 it. The snow did not appear to fall, but to drive 



