Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/343

Rh brought to bag,—of the three Wild Swans killed with the old flint-and-steel duck gun at one discharge with No. 8,—of the wire cartridge which stopped the Great Northern Diver at an unheard-of distance, and of the great frost when he was at it all night, cutting a hole in the ice for the dun-birds and other fowl, after making a rough shelter for himself near by. He once fell asleep while watching, and awoke in a pool of water, which the warmth of his body had melted. The hole was full of dun-birds and the resulting shot gave him eight or nine, some having dived under the ice. Of course there is many a lament at the degeneracy of the present day. "Ah, the winters are not what they were; often they do fare to be more like summer, and those Dutchmen catch all the fowl the other side in their decoys." But when was an old sportsman known to be other than a laudator temporis acti; and, whether ducks be many or few, we may see much of interest in these short winter days spent in the cabin amongst the sand-hills.

The finches which go trooping over the saltings amongst the seeding aster and sea-lavender, are not linnets but Twites from the north country moorlands. Reed Buntings come daily to the dunes to feed on the seeds of the sand-grass, and amongst the skylarks one may sometimes detect the Shore Lark, which we have seen in its summer home amongst the Lapland fells. The warren at the back of the dunes has more