THE DEE AN OCTOBER TIDE 55 



blue clay; the last sea-pie deserted the rocks at our feet. 

 It was high tide, and the birds had moved to make the 

 most of the ebb; the only avian companion left, beside 

 the wheatear and thrush, which were sheltering somewhere 

 out of sight, was a lively fly-catching rock pipit, who 

 absolutely ignored our presence. We rose and looked 

 seaward. The tide had turned, and soon the scoters came 

 back, and odd gulls, less visible than a black duck on 

 the glistening water, drifted past towards the Bay. A 

 guillemot returned from an unconscious up-river trip; 

 a line of wet glacial clay fringed the rocks, a patch 

 of sand, a wet whaleback, hove in sight, the top of a bank; 

 the water was receding as fast as it had come. The 

 pies raced to each bank as it appeared, competing with the 

 curlews and knots for the marine worms, the crustaceans, 

 and molluscs which strove to bury themselves in the sand. 

 The birds know that it is a race against time ; they must 

 catch these fugitives before they realise that they are 

 stranded high and dry. The gulls and waders distributed 

 themselves over miles and miles of freshly exposed banks; 

 only a few redshanks now came near the islands, probing 

 the sands. The larger gulls went seaward towards the 

 great banks of Liverpool Bay, the common gulls and 

 black-heads scattered over the ever widening stretch 

 between us and the land, picking up cockles before they 

 burrowed. These the common gulls smashed by carrying 

 them into the air and dropping them from a height, 

 repeating the performance time after time, until their 

 purpose was achieved. We had a long wait until the 

 gutters were shallow enough for us to cross, but the waiting 

 time was not tedious ; the common gulls smashing cockles, 

 and the black-heads dancing in the shallows to bring up 

 the retreating worms kept up our interest. Once, too, the 

 gulls rose with cries of alarm, for that scourge of the flats 

 and marshes, the peregrine falcon, passed over; it passed 



9 



