Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/78

50 is no sand left for them. Some seek the Dee banks and marsh, where they must keep a sharp look-out for danger; but others wisely repair to the rocks round the islets, where they are safe, for shooting is here illegal.

When from Hilbre to the Red Rocks was one unbroken sheet of water and the gutter which cut us off from the land a rushing torrent, our sport began. Our weapons, no deadlier than field-glass and telescope, were at hand; our costs, fortunately superfluous, spread behind a sandy rampart, we peeped over the bank, levelling glasses on the noisy crowd which lined the ever swelling Swash. Middle Hilbre was alive with birds; they crowded, black masses over its lower rocks, whilst herring, common gulls, and black-heads flitted uneasily over the racing waters, wailing and scolding, as if annoyed that their hunt for food was deferred. A twittering flock of linnets danced in the air round the Eye for a few minutes, then made for the Cheshire shore, but two land birds, a young wheatear and a song thrush, were on the island when we arrived, and we left them there; they were reluctant to leave their island oasis. Both, doubtless, had selected it as a resting-place on their southward journey.

The oyster-catcher, better known to the Dee shrimpers as the "sea-pie," has a single note, described in the books as peep or kleep, which is shortened to an angry pic when the bird is disturbed on its breeding-ground. When twenty or thirty of these beautiful black-and-white birds fly past, calling in harmony, the combined peeps are very musical, though feeble and uninteresting compared with the concert of three or four hundred individuals singing together over their meal at the edge of the tide. No word picture can adequately describe the thrilling music of the sand-banks; the curlew's wild clear call, the triple note of the whimbrel, the sharp bark of the godwit, the liquid whistle of the grey plover, the purr of the dunlin,