Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/77

 ET sands, crossed here and there by shallow gutters, stretched seaward and across the wide Dee estuary far as the eye could reach; the Welsh shore, five miles distant, was hidden in thick mist. Nearly a mile from the land runs a long sandstone ridge or reef, which at high tide splits into the three islets of Hilbre; the smallest and most southerly, the Eye, was our destination, as three hours before full flow we splashed bare-foot through the remnants of the last tide. Gulls were drifting up the main, but the tide had not yet begun to fill the gutters, which are seldom if ever empty before the next inflow refills them. Away seaward a line of foam marked the advancing waters, breaking over the East Hoyle; the red and black buoys in Hilbre Swash heeled landward; the big tide was coming, but there was still time to cross comfortably from the mainland.

Then between the two larger islands the lapping water crept in swift trickles, first filling the ripple marks, then swamping them altogether. Bare-footed cocklers trudged back towards West Kirby, and two belated visitors to the main island raced knee deep through the swelling strait which now separated the two. We were left in sole possession of our observatory, a few square yards of turf clinging to the rocky outcrop, wave-washed in storm, wind-swept at all times, but a great gathering-place for birds. The advancing tide, running swiftly over the flats of Liverpool Bay and the "sands o' Dee," drives flocks and lines of gulls and waders before it; reluctantly they leave each bank and spit, but with a 30-foot tide there