AN OLD CHESHIRE WILD-FOWLER 



SNOW and ice, ice and snow, far as the eye could 

 reach into the mist that hung over the marshes; 

 every broad gutter fringed with an icy border where the 

 last flood had reached, every hollow where the water had 

 lodged firm enough to walk on; flakes of cat-ice where 

 the water had sunk, and packed broken fragments piled 

 on the edge of the rime-encrusted grass; the broad Dee 

 saltings resembled the Arctic regions rather than Cheshire. 

 These frozen marshes were a scene of desolation different 

 from summer days, when the air danced above the short- 

 cropped grass of rich turf, pasturage of hundreds of sheep, 

 and when bright-plumaged sheldrakes flew past, when 

 noisy lapwings called and redshanks yelped over the 

 green plains. A bitter east wind sweeping across the re- 

 claimed levels of Sealand cut like a knife, it was almost 

 torture to face it; yet the cold winter sun struggling 

 through the mist that veiled the distant Welsh shore 

 made the ice particles glitter and sparkle. It was very 

 beautiful, but very cold. 



Hungry fieldfares, redwings, and mistle thrushes looted 

 the red berries from the wind-swept thorns or sheltered 

 in the evergreen oaks in the Hall garden. Skylarks in 

 hundreds searched the tide wrack, every little head down 

 as they ran like mice amongst the debris left by the water ; 

 now and again a twittering flock would rise and pass 

 out into the mist towards some likely bank that they knew 

 well. Black-headed gulls, though now unadorned by 

 brown hoods, beat to and fro, waiting for the food-supply - 



121 



