SOME MUD-FLAT BIRD-NOTES. 



200 



neck and bill with lightning speed the moment a heedless little 

 Eel or Flounder came within striking distance. There they 

 remained for a considerable time without moving from the spot. 

 The younger birds, less patient, marched along, seeking their 

 prey, and, as may be imagined, with far less success. I have 

 seldom been incorrect in judging the age of Herons by their 

 fishing tactics. Occasionally, when conditions — the colour of 

 the water and the direction of the wind (for Flounders frequent 

 different sides of a stream according to winds, although not 

 generally known) — offer a better opportunity than waiting, an 

 adult bird will take the favourable side of a main channel or 

 larger drain, and put out the small Flounders skulking on the 

 sloping edge. When a Heron strikes an Eel too large to swallow 

 with ordinary manipulation, it flies to a " rond," or a flat barely 

 covered by the tide, and there resorts to hammering tactics, 

 often dropping the protesting fish upon the ooze, well satisfied 

 that it can easily snatch at it should it attempt to wriggle away. 

 When five or six or more Herons are feeding in a drain, on either 

 side of which the abrupt banks rise like miniature cliffs, there 

 will be always one head held erect, and one bird on the qui vive 

 against eventualities. I have often been amused watching from 

 a boat or from the bank this grotesque head and neck sticking 

 bolt upright, with no water or break in the flats visible, looking 

 for all the world like a walking-stick thrust into the ooze and 

 left there. 



The Gulls (including Black-headed, Greater Black-backed, 

 Common, and young Herring-Gulls) are often busy on the flood- 

 tide gleaning up trifles, and then at rest on the grassy " lumps " 

 for two or three hours straight off on the ebb-tide. Occasionally 

 the Greater Black-backs leave the flotsam, and on the low water 

 start "crabbing" on the flats, marching in a row as if beating 

 the ground in proper order, throwing over-hand, or rather beak- 

 ful after beakful of Zoster a marina, bringing to light the Shore - 

 Crabs that have been hiding beneath the prone vegetation to 

 await the next flood-tide. It is odd to see them separating the 

 squirming crustaceans from the tangled " grass." They some- 

 times pack their crops full of Crabs, which they kill by a deft 

 squeeze, crushing in the middle of the carapace, where even a 

 pin-thrust would prove immediately fatal. Sometimes they will 



