246 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR 



WILD FOWL ON THE COAST. 



Cold and bleak lies the salt-marsh, in summer gay 

 with sea-lavender and rose flower-heads of thrift. Yet 

 this is no time to sit at home at ease, but rather to 

 sally forth armed with field-glasses, or, if on destruction 

 bent, with lethal weapons, mindful of the wildfowler's 

 aphorism " the worse the weather, the more the birds." 

 For the latter are here in far larger number and variety 

 than was the case when winds were soft and skies were 

 blue. As regards some species there is little change. 

 The Black-headed Gulls still paddle restlessly about 

 the tide-edge, screaming querulously, and the Ringed 

 Plover still rise with feeble piping note from the shingle 

 where, until they move, they are as invisible as the 

 common-sandpiper is on a mud bank. Only the grace- 

 ful terns are gone, — a loss more than atoned for by 

 the arrival of a host of wildfowl from loch and fjord 

 and northern sea. True, the times are not what they 

 used to be, before the birds were harassed by an 

 ever-increasing number of punt-gunners and shore- 

 shooters, or driven from some of their favourite haunts 

 by the vast increase of traffic into and out of the ports 

 and harbours of the east coast. Still when the winter 

 is favourable, i.e., when it brings one or two spells of 

 sharp cold not too long continued, there is something 

 like a return of past glories. Then one may hear again 

 the distant clamour of the wild geese sounding like 



