134 BIRDS OF THE HUMBER DISTRICT. 



commenced about the beginning of April, and is con- 

 tinued throughout the month and into May ; and in 

 cold backward springs they linger till the second or 

 third week before taking their final departure, the 

 late flocks at this period containing birds in summer 

 plumage and others in an advanced state*. Knots 



tiously peering over the embankment, a beautiful and very 

 striking scene met my gaze. The tide was coming in, and from 

 three to four hundred yards of the flats were still uncovered ; in 

 the west the sun was going down in a blaze of glory, and the 

 usual grey and dreary mud plains had borrowed the gorgeous 

 colours of sunset they were purple with reflected light, while 

 beyond, the great river in all its tranquillity, and almost unbroken 

 by a ripple, was barred and streaked with purple, gold, and 

 crimson. Thousands and thousands of Knots were massed to- 

 gether on the foreshore, here crowded as closely as they could 

 sit, then again straggling out into a more open line, and then 

 again massed together by thousands. Some hundreds of yards 

 length, and about thirty breadth, along the edge of the 

 water, were fairly crowded with them. One part or other of 

 this great congregation was almost constantly on the wing, flying 

 over the heads of those sitting, and then settling again. All the 

 time they kept up what I may almost call a continual warbling j 

 the blended notes 'of so many birds was so completely unlike the 

 usual sharp cry of the Knot, that at first I could scarcely believe 

 it came from that species ; it more resembled the twittering of 

 a countless flock of Linnets. Shortly before sunset the flock 

 rose, taking a course directly across the Humber : they did not 

 all rise together, but, commencing at one extremity, gradually 

 took flight. When all on the wing, their appearance was that of 

 an immense dark undulating line of smoke from the funnel of a 

 steamboat." 



* A flock of forty-five Knots on the Humber flats, examined 

 through a telescope on the 13th of May, 1871, showed three 



