122 BIRD HAUNTS AND NATURE MEMORIES 



ing water; and far in advance of the tide came a great 

 flock of curlew, alighting on a patch of marsh which even 

 the high tide could not swamp; here they crowded, 

 bunched together, their wild moorland calls deadened by 

 the searching wind. 



Ere we reached the small white farmstead that stands 

 on the very edge of the saltings, its garden wall lapped by 

 the highest tides, the deep gutter that runs close inshore 

 remnant of the ancient channel was filling fast. Up 

 came the water, bearing on its flood a swaying mass of 

 ice blocks, floes, and crinkling fragments; visibly the level 

 rose till the frozen mud vanished and a broad, swift river 

 forced its way towards the embankment. The tide was 

 coming. 



A steel-grey line stretched across the horizon towards 

 the once famous Parkgate, indistinct at first, then growing 

 clearer, till we could see the dancing ripples of the racing 

 waters. Sandbanks and mud flats disappeared, grass- 

 covered salting sank beneath the flood; tiny trickles 

 became brooks, empty depressions deep gutters, gutters 

 rivers, until the tide swept far and wide across the view. 



" The western tide crept up along the sand, 

 And o'er and o'er the sand, 

 And round and round the sand, 

 As far as eye could see. 

 The rolling mist came down and hid the land." 



With the water came the gulls black-heads and 

 commons galore, lesser black-backs and herrings; before 

 the tide reached the frozen cart-track a pair of great 

 black-backed gulls, fine birds indeed, alighted on the shore 

 to investigate the body of a crow. The curlews packed 

 closer as the water swirled round their refuge; not until 

 the freshened mud was left bare at the ebb, bare but 

 glittering with daggers of new ice did they move in 

 search of food. 



