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AUTUMN AND WINTER 



On the shingle patches high above the highest wave-sweep 

 of the spring tides flocks of snow buntings, tinkling their 

 bell-like note as they flit from spot to spot, explore the 

 brown sands. Their quest is the buried and unburied seeds 

 of the dune-plants that the wind and the drift sand play hide- 

 and-seek with, the seeds of maram and sand-sedge and 

 the low-growing vegetation that bloomed and seeded last 

 autumn, and dispersed, leaving an earnest of vegetation for 

 the spring to follow. The naturalist and the bird-catcher 



who lays his nets hard by the sand dunes recognise 

 occasionally among their flocks the hardy Lapland bunting, 

 the snow-bird, and the shore-lark. Happily these bird- 

 catchers, the greatest of all enemies of our rarer birds, are 

 beginning to decrease. Then there are grey linnets trooping 

 southwards, resting and feeding as they travel, twites and 

 redpoles the lesser and the mealy appearing in twittering, 

 dancing flocks, keeping to the coastline, having arrived, 

 perhaps but a day or two since, on the Norfolk coast. In 

 January 1895 a later migration sped them in astonishing 

 numbers before a spell of exceedingly wintry weather. It is 

 horrible to record that one bird-catcher netted 70, 130, 220, 

 330 linnets in four successive days. When bad weather set 



