Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/96

66, on the fine headland at Beer. As it sent its challenge over the waves below, the ragged feathers stood out on its throat; it dipped its body and half opened its wings when it called. Sometimes the pair circled together, rising on splayed-out wing until mere specks in the sky; sometimes as they flew along the cliff face one would sportively roll, shooting forward with feet and breast uppermost. On the short grass, where bedstraw abounds, the raven finds food in abundance, though in small morsels. The powerful bill, which can tear tough flesh, can daintily pick up the whorled Helix, or intercept the sedate and globular bloody-nosed beetle. Both species of this beetle were plentiful on the headland. and when picked up justified their name by discharging from the mouth a red fluid.

Starlings work the Head for beetles and snails, but they appear to be satisfied with the smaller molluscs; it is the thrushes which hammer the unfortunate aspersa on a stone anvil until they have so shattered it that they can extract the animal from the shell.

Further west, on the long lagoon at Slapton, South Devon shows what it can do in the way of wild-fowl. The fresh water is separated from the tide by a broad and high pebble ridge where

But nothing but spume or spray enters the lagoon, and the gulls splash and bathe in fresh water. Coots were here, not in dozens or scores, but in hundreds; the western end was black with coots. Wigeon swarmed on the water, the crested drakes announced the fact in a beautiful chorus of whistles. Moorhens made for the reeds, leaving a trail behind as they flew, beating the water with running