THE WATER-BIRDS.
With mingled sound of horns and bells,
A far-heard clang, the Wild Geese fly,
Storm sent from Arctic moors and fells,
Like a great arrow through the sky.
When you think of the Water-birds, you say, perhaps, that they are uninteresting, have no song, and inhabit marshy and desolate places; the Gulls are picturesque, to be sure, but as for the others, Snipe, Rail, and Ducks, they are only Game-birds and so much food, of a variety that does not particularly suit your palate. This is because you have regarded them as mere merchandise, and have never seen or considered them as living birds, winging their way over the lonely marshes and wind-swept beaches, clad in feathers that blend in their hues the sky, the water, the mottled sands of the shore, the bronzed splendour of the seaweeds, and the opalescence that lines the sea-shell. Though in a sense they are songless, their call notes are keyed in harmony with the winds that they combat, and the creaking reeds that hide their nests, and their signalling cries rise as distinctly above the more melodious sounds of Nature as the whistle of the distant buoy sounding above the surf.
The very remoteness of the Water-birds gives them a charm for certain natures. They do not build in the garden and come about your door craving attention; you must not only go half-way to meet them, but all the way, and that too right cautiously. There is an invigorating spice of adventure when the bird-quest tends shoreward, whether it is the banks of a river or lake that furnishes shelter and sustenance alike to the nesting bird and the restless migrant; or the shore of the sea with its possibilities and changing moods, — the sea that stretches infinitely on, ribbed by light-
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