Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/92

62 The herring season was drawing to a close, but a few gannets haunted the coast, wheeling high above the water on narrow, black-tipped wing, then dropping headlong with a half corkscrew dive to plunge on the gleaming prey beneath. One day, close to the sea-wall, a red-throated diver was swimming and taking lengthy under-water excursions; it was on its way to northern waters, a winter visitor to southern seas in no hurry to feel the call of spring. Though still in winter dress its spotted back and slender build, but especially its slightly uptilted bill, made identification easy as it swam within stone-throw.

In the Torquay gardens, ruddy with valerian, and gay with wallflowers, forget-me-nots, and scillas, thrushes were in full song, but the song thrush avails itself of any bright winter day to get into form for the later months. More unusual was the piping of the blackbird in early February, and the cheery rattle of the abundant chaffinches. The garrulous rook always has much to say around the rookery long before early nesting has begun, but in Devon the daws were more noticeable; round the red beetled crag at Watcombe, where countless numbers nest in safety, they wheeled in aerial mazes, crossing and recrossing one another's path until the eye was dazzled by the restless specks, and the air bummed with the incessant sharp and almost querulous cries. Then on curved wing, like some huge swift, a noble peregrine swept over, and the sharp calls deepened into the long corvine note of alarm; but the falcon had no wish for daw flesh and passed on, and soon the sinister threat had slipped the memory of those grey-pated heads.

Invalids and convalescents, who have fled the treachery of northern winters and springs, sit in the sunshine in the sheltered Torquay rock garden. There, too, close by an almond in full blossom on the first day of February, were a couple of blackcaps, feeding contentedly on the ripe