Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/85

Rh blue clay; the last sea-pie deserted the rocks at our feet. It was high tide, and the birds had moved to make the most of the ebb; the only avian companion left, beside the wheatear and thrush, which were sheltering somewhere out at sight, was a lively fly-catching rock pipit, who absolutely ignored our presence. We rose and looked seaward. The tide had turned, and soon the scoters came back, and odd gulls, less visible than a black duck on the glistening water, drifted past towards the Bay. A guillemot returned from an unconscious up-river trip; a line of wet glacial clay fringed the rocks, a patch of sand, a wet whaleback, hove in sight, the top of a bank; the water was receding as fast as it had come. The pies raced to each bank as it appeared, competing with the curlews and knots for the marine worms, the crustaceans, and molluscs which strove to bury themselves in the sand. The birds know that it is a race against time; they must catch these fugitives before they realise that they are stranded high and dry. The gulls and waders distributed themselves over miles and miles of freshly exposed banks; only a few redshanks now came near the islands, probing the sands. The larger gulls went seaward towards the great banks of Liverpool Bay, the common gulls and black-heads scattered over the ever widening stretch between us and the land, picking up cockles before they burrowed. These the common gulls smashed by carrying them into the air and dropping them from a height, repeating the performance time after time, until their purpose was achieved. We had a long wait until the gutters were shallow enough for us to cross, but the waiting time was not tedious; the common gulls smashing cockles, and the black-heads dancing in the shallows to bring up the retreating worms kept up our interest. Once, too, the gulls rose with cries of alarm, for that scourge of the flats and marshes, the peregrine falcon, passed over; it passed