166 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS. 



shores are thrown up into ridges and rugged piles, extending 

 for miles along the shore. Outside this glacial barrier of 

 stranded blocks, the floating floes, carried along by the strong 

 tide-currents, grind and crash against each other, piling up 

 cake upon cake till they become miniature icebergs, and 

 form a spectacle such as few have seen outside the Arctic 

 regions.'* 



The effect of such metamorphoses upon the fowl are 

 obvious ; great part of their feeding grounds are rendered 

 inaccessible to them. At low water, or during neap tides, 

 many hundreds of acres of the mud are buried under the 

 stranded ice-floes, and as the tide rises the whole area is 

 occupied by these blocks, rushing, driving, and careering 

 forward on the current. So great is the turmoil that it is in 

 the highest degree unsafe to venture among the moving ice 

 in a gunning-punt ; and, of course, for the fowl it is even 

 more impossible safely to visit their accustomed feeding 

 haunts. Especially must this be the case by night, when 

 the drift ice would be invisible ; hence many of the noc- 

 turnal fowl are at such times to be seen about the oozes by 

 day. 



It is at such times as these, when ice and snow cover both 

 land and sea, and the angry leaden sky is spangled with 

 driving feathery flakes at such times one may look for the 

 appearance of the Hooper, monarch of the flood, and several 

 of these noble wildfowl sometimes pay the penalty of their 

 lives ere they learn the wisdom of giving a wide berth to 

 that low, white, unsuspicious-looking craft which so closely 

 resembles the blocks of ice drifting along on the tide. In 

 the mild winter of 1882, about Christmas, several of the 

 smaller species (Bewick's Swan) appeared on this coast, 

 and, being very incautious, were, I believe, all killed. 



* An apparently similar result is produced by heavy snowfalls, even 

 when unaccompanied by hard frost. The snow which accumulates 

 during low water on the flats becomes solidified by the rising tide, and 

 floats away in large blocks closely resembling ice. These, however, 

 are comparatively soft and " rotten," and can be penetrated by a punt 

 without danger, and with but little trouble. We had plenty of this 

 half-frozen drift snow during the early part of the month of January, 

 1887 



