Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/284

202 all sorts of holes and crevices amongst the rocks. From amongst the bents and sand-grass just above the foreshore we put up a short-eared owl,—"woodcock owl" it is often called, for the two are fellow-travellers, and if the owl is noted the long-bills will not be far behind. The lighthouse keeper will tell us that next to the skylarks in point of numbers come the starlings. The two together constitute a large proportion of the basketful of dead or crippled birds which he picks up below the light in the morning. But in regular "migration weather," warm and foggy, birds often appear to lose their way, and anything may turn up. One Norfolk naturalist fell in with a whole flock of bluethroats, and certain Lincolnshire ornithologists, who regularly work the fringe of thickets behind the foreshore or at the back of the dunes at migration time, know from experience that there is no rare warbler, European or even Asiatic, whose occurrence is beyond the bounds of possibility.

Rough weather with snow-squalls will, later on, bring the Snow Buntings, with a sprinkling of Shore Larks. A bird-catcher has been known to net sixty-four of the latter at a single haul upon Yarmouth denes. A heavy gale towards the end of the month causes various storm-driven wanderers to appear inshore, whereas in fine weather their path of southerly migration lies far out at sea. Sometimes from the harbour pier one may see a Storm Petrel flitting amongst the