n6 BIRD HAUNTS AND NATURE MEMORIES 



approach; the birds were hungry, for supplies were 

 limited. Where the peat-stained water debouched upon 

 the sand all was glazed with ice ; the tide pools, where the 

 fresh-water gammarid meets the salt-water mysid, were 

 closed to all crustaceans, and no marine worm could 

 force its way through the frozen surface cake; naturally 

 the waders had left them to other bipeds, the sliding, 

 cheerful village children. An odd disconsolate dunlin 

 here and there, a ringed plover with its plumage puffed 

 out like a robin, wandered unprofitably along the high 

 tide maik, but most of their fellows were with the oyster- 

 catchers at the edge of the incoming tide. 



The sand itself was firm as a macadam road and far 

 more slippery, for the receding, shallowing waves froze 

 as they slipped seaward, and the wet surface became a 

 film of ice. Ice, too, had filled the tiny valleys between 

 the iron-hard ridges of the ripple marks, and all along 

 the highest tide line was a broad ice border, inches deep 

 and several yards in width. The flowing tide had stripped 

 the ice film from the shore, pushing it forward, piling 

 layer upon layer; film had frozen to film, forming a 

 cake; cake upon cake had made an ice-floe. Crushed 

 and up-ended, this mass had been forced landward by 

 the resistless power behind until the shore resembled an 

 Arctic scene. 



When the tide turned the steady beat of powerful 

 wings and the clanging cries of swans drowned the crink- 

 ling of the disturbed ice; five whoopers, with necks out- 

 stretched, came one behind the other from the upper 

 marsh. They passed quickly, for the slow beats are 

 wonderfully strong; in a few seconds they vanished into 

 the seaward haze. 



Next day the wind backed to the west, and warmer 

 sea-breezes brought a thaw and clearer air, and we looked 

 out on a fine range of snow-clad hills, behind Dumfries 



