Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/285

Rh crests of the waves. After such a night, when it has been blowing great guns, we have seen the Grey Phalaropes swimming amongst the tangle of drifted sea-wrack, paddling about like miniature ducks, though far more lightly and trim-built, long-winged and swift of flight as a plover.

Amongst the Kittiwakes, whose presence in the bay is always an indication of dirty weather outside, one may detect the rare and beautiful Sabine's Gull. We have known a west coast bird-stuffer to have nearly a dozen of them through his hands in one week of wild autumn weather. Similar conditions sometimes bring a flight of the dark-plumaged robber-gulls known as Skuas, which make their living by forcing the true gulls to disgorge their finny spoil.

A keen October morning which has opened with a white frost is always associated with the "shack shack, shack" of the first Fieldfares as they pass overhead or rise from the meadows as their sentinels in the tree-tops shriek a chattering alarm. At the sound how memory reverts to their summer haunts amongst the birch-woods which fringe the Norwegian fjords. Wary birds are the blue-backed "felts," first object of pursuit of many a youthful gunner. Rarely does the stalk under cover of the well-berried hawthorn hedge prove successful; snow, frost and scanty fare must tame their spirits before they will allow of a sufficiently near approach. The smaller