262 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS. 



observing, at very close quarters, many birds which, are 

 ordinarily unapproachably wild. The intensity of the frost, 

 covering the oozes with thin sheets of ice between tides, has 

 the effect of making many fowl quite tame. Mallards espe- 

 cially were frequently passed within twenty or thirty yards, 

 sitting asleep on the mud, with their bills tucked under 

 their back feathers, others paddling about the water's edge, 

 dabbling about among the sea-grass, all quite unconscious of 

 our close proximity. The Mallards were in small bunches 

 of three or four up to a dozen, and all these were the heavy 

 native-bred ducks, driven down to the open water of the 

 coast by the severe weather, their ordinary haunts on the 

 moorland lochs being frozen and snowed up. These heavy 

 ducks it is most unusual to meet with on the coast at this 

 season, except under such exceptional climatic conditions as 

 prevailed that March. They are easily distinguished from 

 the foreign ducks by their extra size and tameness ; more- 

 over, the foreigners are not usually found in harbour by day. 

 They, together with the Wigeon, to the number of perhaps a 

 couple of thousand, spend the day in their accustomed resort, 

 a secluded bay a mile or two along the coast, where they are 

 safe enough from man and all his devices, and do not 

 approach their feeding grounds till well after dark. Eed- 

 shanks were frequently feeding within ten yards, up to their 

 breast-feathers in water, and a pretty sight it was to watch 

 the impetuous manner they tossed aside the floating weed 

 to find some food which it concealed. Oyster-catchers and 

 other waders were also extremely tame, and for the first time 

 since January 1881, I noticed great numbers of Golden 

 Plovers out on the salt-slakes. On one occasion I approached 

 a long thin line of Knots on the mud-edge, all asleep, no 

 heads in sight, and looking for all the world like a strip of 

 rounded blue pebbles, except that they were raised a couple 

 of inches off the mud. As these birds do not breed in 

 England (or in Europe either for that matter), and neither 

 they nor the Geese are included in the Wildfowl Act, I sent 

 a charge from the cripple-gun athwart their line and secured 

 eight of them. 



On the evening of the last day a catastrophe occurred. It 



