Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/81

Rh waders who find the companionship of rock hunters more to their taste than the birds which haunt the sandy shore; there are usually some of these two species on the weed-fringed rocks of Hilbre. The curlew sandpiper, a bird with a long, slightly curved bill and conspicuous white upper tail-coverts, was not present, nor was that diminutive dunlin, the little stint; the majority of these two species had no doubt passed in August or September. A few often appear amongst the Dee little birds, but they are never really common.

Curlews, easily distinguished by their size and note from the whimbrels, constantly passed in parties, their long curved bills outlined against the sky; on Middle Hilbre they gathered until, from the Eye, three-quarters of a mile away, it looked as if the grass was browsed by innumerable tiny brown sheep. They left the Eye severely alone; the curlew's sight is too sharp. Not so the pies, for when the sand-browned water lapped the red rocks below us they began to settle, first a single bird, then a score, then hundreds at a time. They saw us and were nervous, but they clung, from habit, to this high-tide roost, and though at times all rose at once and flew round the rock, the scare soon abated and peace reigned once more. Peace? No, they were hardly peaceful, for as each fresh party arrived it drove the first comers into the tide. The reefs at the Red Rocks on the Cheshire shore were one by one submerged, and party after party of pies and godwits, which had used this rest so long as the tide allowed, came swinging, with much conversation, across the water. The godwit flies with the neck drawn back, its bill held straight, but when these barking bar-tails passed the slight uptilt of the beak showed clearly. The bar-tailed godwits settled with the oyster-catchers, swelling the uneasy crowd; they leapt out of the waves, and with a ﬂutter of wings dropped where the crowd was