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Winter birds in Mid-Dorset.



birds, as Blackbirds and Thrushes, find the same places attractive.

During the early winter large numbers of Redwings came.


A few Herons visit us from southwards, from the woods

towards Wimborne and the River Stour. They come during the

night, feed in the watermeads and river, and return early in the

morning. Sometimes one delays, and is seen by daylight. I saw

one go hack, flying low over the farm, at eight o’clock. Another

morning, between eight and nine o’clock, I drove along one side of

the water-meadow and a Heron went up very slowly, rising after the

Gulls and Plovers with which it had been feeding. It turned and

sailed away to the south, with the slowest wing-beats I have ever

seen a bird give. The shape and lagging action of the wings, and

the backward-bent neck of the Heron cannot be mistaken. One

morning about ten o’clock I saw one standing motionless under a

hedge over a ditch. It waited whilst I walked more than halfway

across the meadow, then slipped through the hedge, and I did not

see it again. Late one night I stood at the open window of my

bedroom, and a big dark bird, with slowly-flapping vanes, sailed close

past and gave a loud, harsh cry— almost a croak—very eerie in the

stilly darkness. I thought for the moment it was a Raven, but

everything points to its being a Heron.


Gulls are regular and daily visitors, following the field opera¬

tions, and feeding wherever there is water. Their wings are notably

longer and more powerful than those of inland birds. The Gulls

are obviously visitors, as distinct from the local residents. Their

snowy slightly marked plumage, long graceful wheeling flights,

lengthy wings with curved tips, comparatively small boat-like

bodies, and occasional mournful cries, mark them out as creatures of

different environment from the land birds. They bring with them

suggestions of vast open spaces of sea and sky, of stinging salt

breezes, of azure expanses above and around, of white clouds and

sunshine, or dashing waves and surging spray on the coast.


(. To be continued.)



