The Secret Flight 193 



immature birds with the variety of adult white 

 and grey and the uniform pepper-and-salt mixture 

 of the young in their first plumage. The young gulls 

 are now as large as their parents, and often much 

 plumper ; but the cry of a young herring-gull is 

 feeble and mewing, ludicrously out of proportion to 

 its size, and recalling the puny voice of the fledged 

 cuckoo. Parent gulls are silent now, compared with 

 the tumult of hound-like yelps which they poured 

 forth round their nest-rocks in May ; but now and 

 then a patient and melancholy note is flung on the 

 August air and wakes a harsh answering clang from 

 the herons standing like posts far out in some trickle 

 among the ooze. The sheldrakes lead abroad their 

 troops of ducklings in July, to scuttle cheerfully 

 over the heaves of the mud- banks or to float happily 

 at low water in some sand-barred creek. By August 

 the shell-ducklings are almost as large and brilliant 

 with chestnut and black and white as their parents, 

 and drift with them in shining bands on the surface 

 of the incoming tide. They form a beautiful 

 picture of August peace ; but it is belied by the 

 restless activity of the troops of waders. Curlews 

 are ever restless and wary, rising and calling across 

 the sands with the melancholy and musical notes 

 which remain after the most jubilant spring cries 

 are gone. Redshanks open their wing-feathers as 

 they spring into the air with a repeated flute-like 

 call, and vanish from sight on the brown sand or 

 grey mud-banks as they close their quills on alighting. 

 But of all the birds that haunt the tide, the most 

 numerous and conspicuous are the dunlins. Grey- 

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