WINTER BIRDS. 213 



and wait only now for the night. And this, 

 perhaps, is the strangest thing of all : When 

 darkness has fallen, when winds are high and 

 contrary, when the waterways of the fjords are 

 boiling with foam — then it is that these frail 

 things launch themselves on the storm and 

 into the night. " From the land of snow and 

 sleet they seek a southern lea." 



In a Norwegian barque we are tossing off 

 the Dogger Bank — betwixt that and the 

 Galloper Lightship. The crosstrees and com- 

 panion-ladder are covered with wheatears, tit- 

 larks, redstarts, a single blue-throated warbler, 

 and hundreds of goldcrests. Thousands of the 

 last species are coming and going, and others 

 are beating out their little lives against the 

 beacon-light. Vast flocks go on all through 

 the night until dawn, when only stragglers 

 blindly follow the same lines. 



Or it is night, and we are waiting for the 

 flights in the Lighthouse tower, where we have 

 been since afternoon. The season is the time 

 of the heaviest migration, and we are right 

 in the track of the migrants. For nights past 

 numbers of birds have been arriving and de- 

 parting, and, as the sea-weather is " thick," 



