Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/335

Rh the gulls of the open sea par excellence, close inshore and making the best of the partial protection afforded by the harbour-pier. In continued rough weather many of them are drowned, beaten down into the sea by the gale. Bewildered by the darkness and driven before the tempest, disabled sea-birds,—gannet, shearwater or petrel,—are often picked up far inland when the gale has spent itself. Thus we hear of a puffin found fluttering on the roof of a midland church, just as we have known a water-rail to go astray on migration and turn up in a boot-and-shoe shop. Overhead wires in large cities are often fatal to such storm-driven wanderers, while platelayers and others who are much about the railway line know what a toll the telegraph wires exact.

Given a fine morning even the December sun may for an hour or two make a brave show and give us light sufficient to see what business is forward in copse and hedge-row. We follow the wide, grassy track, nearly disused at the present day, of the old Roman road, deserted now by the summer birds which found cover in its ample edging of briers and brambles. A kestrel climbs the air with easy sweep, then stands for a moment against the breeze. The fourfold combination of sparrows, chaffinches, greenfinches and yellowhammers greets us from every hedge. As we come to a dry ditch we hear the squeal of a rabbit and, pulling aside the bushes, see it giving its last convulsive