BIRDS LOST IN STORMS 125 



the shore ; and in another case thirteen of the 

 'red-legged' variety attempted the flight across the 

 estuary of the Stour, and falling exhausted, were 

 picked up by some boatmen fishing for c dabs/ a 

 welcome and unlooked-for haul. But perhaps the 

 most remarkable instance of land-birds being carried 

 to sea by the wind, just as the ocean-dwelling petrels 

 are drifted over the land, is that recorded in the last 

 century of a flight of woodcocks, which drifted over 

 England, and dropped in hundreds into the sea be- 

 yond Cornwall and the Scilly islands. Probably they 

 had started from Norway against a gentle southerly 

 wind, and had then been caught in mid-air by a gale 

 from the east. But mishaps of this kind indicate no 

 such stress of storm as the appearance on our shores 

 of the ocean-loving petrels, to whom, rather than to 

 the * cormorants, ducks, and gulls/ Clough's appeal 

 to the sea-birds more nearly applies : 



' Ye over stormy seas leading long and dreary processions, 

 Ye, too, brood of the wind, whose coming is whence we discern 



not, 



Making your nest on the wave, and your home on the crested 

 billow, 



. fill ye my imagination ! 

 Let us not talk of Growth ! We are still in our Aqueous Ages ! ' 



