FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A DUNLIN. 21 



" However did you escape ? " asked my brother, as I lay panting but safe 

 amidst my family. 



li I don't know," I replied, faintly ; for now that the excitement was over, 

 I felt positively sick with fear. 



It was not until near the end of August that father said it was time we 

 left the Fells and began our journey southwards to our winter quarters ; and 

 before starting he gave us much advice concerning the dangers that we should 

 have to encounter on the way. Most of our actual travelling was to be done 

 by night, and having united with several other families that had bred upon 

 the moor, we began to gradually work our way down the East coast. All went 

 well until we reached the shore of Lincolnshire. It was misty weather when 

 we got there, and many of our party flew into the long nets, which the fowlers 

 here spread across the sand, and became entangled in their deadly meshes. 

 We crossed the Wash by night in similar weather, and despite father's frequent 

 calls it was a difficult matter to keep within touch of one another. All of a 

 sudden a blaze of distant light appeared in the midst of the darkness, and by 

 a common impulse our whole company made straight for this guiding torch ; 

 ignoring the warnings of several older birds Terns, Waders, Chats, Swal- 

 lows, Warblers all fluttered madly towards the glare; but it went out 

 suddenly even as it had appeared ; we lost the line, and most of us passed just 

 clear of a large stone erection, which I afterwards heard was a lighthouse. 

 One of my sisters, indeed, who had judged the direction only too accurately, 

 flew against its glass windows and fell a mangled corpse into the sea. Father 

 said it was the revolving light that had saved us, and that in the old days 

 when the lights were stationary many more used to be attracted to their 

 doom. 



And now we had reached a nice quiet estuary on the Norfolk coast, where 

 father proposed to spend a week or so before proceeding further on our way. 

 We scattered a bit as soon as it was light, and I passed the first morning 

 snapping up small Crustacea on some succulent ooze around an aged smack, 

 that lay anchored in one of the most secluded creeks. Here I made the 

 acquaintance of a small party of Turnstones, who pottered about amongst the 

 stones and garbage not ten yards from the side of the smack. Two men were 

 sitting on it, and I heard one of them say : " Well, Bob, what price your 

 chicken to-morrow morning ? " 



I don't know why, but a queer sensation came over me, though I did not 

 understand what he meant, and when I met father in the evening I told him 

 what I had heard. He said he didn't like it : he was at all events glad he was 

 not one of the Turnstones, and when mother said that she thought to-morrow 



