File:Birds through the year (1922) (14732470506).jpg

Identifier: birdsthroughyear00thom (find matches)
Title: Birds through the year
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Thomas, William Beach, Sir, 1868-1957 Collet, Anthony Keeling, 1877-
Subjects: Birds -- Great Britain Birds -- Pictorial works
Publisher: London, Edinburgh, T.C. and E.C. Jack, ltd
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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and, flung from wave to wave, after becoming wearied outby constant diving, and by plunging through the rollers, byand by the breakers cast them dead or dying on the beach.It is no uncommon thing for the rambler on the shore tofind a guillemot bunched up as if sleeping just above themargin of the highest wave, and, on stooping to pick it up,to find it dead and stiffened. More rarely the razorbillsuffers with it. Life is harder for the birds of the sea, thoughthe sea is unfrozen, than the birds of the land. For by thesea there is always the winter of heavy winds. But not onlysea birds come for a space to find food by the sea shore. Among the least restful flocks are scaups, wigeon, tuftedducks, and shelducks. The black-plumaged scoter, the mussel duck of the east coast fowler, hardy and vigorous
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THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD 321 of wing and foot, seems not to heed so much the fury of theelements. Its home is on the sea, its food abundant in thequieter deeps below : it is an excellent diver, and searchesdiligently for the fat, brittle-shelled trough-shell and thesmaller mussels, nor are small crabs and kindred crustaceansdespised by them. Running nimbly along the moistened sands various shorebirds hunt for such fragmentary or minuter forms as thelarger birds reject. Dunlins trot in zig-zag fashion up anddown the wetsands. Herethey snap upsmall crusta-ceans : — gam-mams, hyperia,corophium, andcrangon, andtiny fragmentsof other animalbodies. Occasionally the purple sandpiper may be met with : preferring rockybeaches and the neighbourhood of fucus-decorated pilesand boulders, they will search the flattened stretches ofsands, and, being daring, will run down a retreatingwave-wash, thigh deep, in order to snatch up any tempt-ing morsel. One seldom sees two together, less oftena trio of

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