THE FLATS 31 



the black of the underparts has become white, and the 

 dark mottled browns of the upper an ashy grey, so that 

 the birds have turned ghostly to meet the season of mists. 

 They are — pity for them — remarkably tame, and are 

 reluctant to take their graceful, easy flight, very different 

 from the impetuous dashes of redshank and sanderling, 

 quickly alighting again. Altogether their disposition is 

 calmer and more leisurely than that of other shore birds, 

 and they stride over the mud with a certain sedateness 

 quite unlike the fanciful, irregular runs, so characteristic 

 of the smaller waders. They have a delightful habit of 

 pointing as they feed, the body being slightly tilted 

 forward and the neck thrust out on a level with the 

 back, and there they stand in an attitude of fixed atten- 

 tion, as though musing on the fate of the doomed 

 crustacean before they gobble him up. 



The most abundant of the smaller birds, next to the 

 ringed plover, were sanderling, " easily recognizable," 

 say the books, " easily recognizable " by the absence 

 of the hind-toe. If, however, a professional ornithologist 

 can mark the absence of a pedal appendage an inch long 

 from the foot of a bird smaller than a song-thrush a 

 long way off, on a grey expanse of mud flat, I cannot, 

 and preferred to distinguish my sanderling by the 

 blackish mottlings of the back (pearl-grey in winter), 

 the light stippled reddish-brown (lost in winter) of the 

 upper breast, and the luminous white of the underparts. 

 Small bands of knots (a circumpolar species), Cnut's 

 table bird according to Michael Drayton, and distin- 

 guishable by a strong rufous blush over the throat and 

 breast (also lost in winter), and a rather stockish build, 

 roamed the flats, and tumstones (Norvice, " tangle- 

 picker," and very blurred in colouring after the moult), 

 were in more or less the same numbers. They are mining 

 specialists in the small crustaceans lying under stones, 

 and they will (it is said) often co-operate to heave them 

 over with their bills. ^ Mr. Boraston's Birds by Zand 

 and Sea wonders how it is that the other Limicolce who 

 see the tumstones trotting industriously to and fro on 



^ See a delightful account of co-operation among tumstones 

 in vol. V (pp. 52-55) of Morris's British Birds. 



