STUDY FOR A PICTORIAL GROUP OF BIRDS, ETC. 399 



the waterway of the deeper, larger creeks, and harbour stores of 

 mussels, sea-wrack, and green "flannel-weed," and here and 

 there the gaunt timbers of some poor wreck lie athwart the 

 shell-inhabited ooze ; but on the edges of all flourishes the 

 green and gold and lilac. 



Here, where the garden is thickest, and the treacherous 

 ooze with slimy weeds lets the foot slip to the shelly bottom a 

 foot or more below, and where clear runnels course over ropes 

 upon ropes of ' mussels and other living things, dart upwards, 

 with lightning speed and with many a weird sharp whistle, two 

 or three greyish birds. Bang, bang, clatters out the choke- 

 bore ; a right and left. Good ! both down ; and as a fresh 

 cartridge is being inserted, a larger, browner bird crosses 

 behind, bound for the sea-sands, which he never reaches, for 

 again the gun rings out, and he falls dead at quite a long range. 

 Certainly the first three shots — two redshanks and a whimbrel 

 — in the flower-garden by the sea are encouraging, and so the 

 bag swells, for beyond, where the mussels are thickest and the 

 garden grows thin, flaps up on whirring wing a teal ; again a 

 greenshank ; more redshanks — several of these decoyed near 

 the concealed gun by an imitation of their notes, and brought 

 headlong out of the sky. So with the curlews, which otherwise 

 rise exasperatingly well out of range, and whistle their bold 

 defiance, setting everything else in the marsh in commotion. 



Far on the sands pipe the pretty ringed plovers, their note 

 far softer and more melodious than the hurried shrill whistle of 

 the redshanks, and as they rise at the sound of some big punt- 

 gun, they gleam, as do the stints, silvery white against the 

 darker clouds, only by the next waft of their wings to show 

 dusky ; and so in dense flocks, alternately gleaming argent and 

 sable, they wing their way along the edge of the waters, and 

 again pipe their mellow note resonant of the sea and its wonders. 

 Anon come, from high in the sparkling air, liquid piccolo-like 



