JULY 143 



the Wild Ducks, now all alike in plumage, for the 

 drakes have undergone that curious transformation 

 of dress which for nearly five months of the year 

 renders them indistinguishable from their sober- 

 coloured mates. Some broods of " flappers," not yet 

 flying, take refuge amongst the reeds, which also affqrd 

 shelter to the white-fronted Coots, each followed by 

 her brood of young in black down with some rusty 

 red about the head. 



It is not too late for those who seek the sea in July 

 to find much of interest about the sand-dunes and 

 shingle-beaches of the coast. The shifting dunes, 

 held together by the wiry marram-grass, form a minia- 

 ture desert where every passer-by — rabbit, bird, 

 lizard or insect — leaves a characteristic track in the 

 finely sifted sand. 



Where tracts of shingle and shell-beaches fringe the 

 sand-dunes, the Ring Plover pipe anxiously, and the 

 eye may chance to light on the four eggs, resting, 

 like miniature peewits' point to point, in a slight hollow 

 which, whatever may be said to the contrary, the bird 

 often lines with a carefully-laid mosaic of small stones 

 and bits of shell. Or the young, a little ball of grey 

 cotton-wool on stilts, may be found running over the 

 foreshore or squatting flat upon the shingle, in every 

 tint and shade part and parcel of its surroundings. 

 Here, too, Oyster-catchers, whose black and white 

 dress has earned for them the name of "sea-pie," 



