WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
twenty to two hundred birds, bewildered, weary. 
They huddled in what shelter they might, and 
only chirped querulously when some stronger 
arrival thrust them out into the wind. And 
over all passed a ceaseless stream of plover. As 
far as eye could see they spangled the sky. 
They came as it were in successive waves, each 
wave of some two hundred peewits, extending 
for miles along the coast ; and in the rifts 
between, the golden plover swiftest thing 
which flies dashed by, heading towards the 
granite-crowned brow of Moyle Hill. In stormy 
weather Moyle is the landmark by which the 
Feather Folk take their bearings. 
To seaward the wind whipped the tops of the 
waves into foam. The air was awhirl with danc- 
ing snowflakes which stung cruelly cold, and 
hissed when they touched the water. How many 
throbbing breasts were stilled in the stormy 
Channel that dawn only the Channel knows, for 
the sea claims a heavy toll when the Feather 
Folk travel. At nine o'clock more redwings 
came in perhaps a hundred birds. Twice that 
number had left Wales, but the rest had gone 
astray. In that flock one among many such 
flocks was a bird, a unit among the starving 
hordes on the Coolnabrock sandhills, but, such 
as it was, his subsequent history was known to 
the human chronicler, and shall be duly set out. 
'38 
