Thomas Alfred Coward

“ The ringed plovers did not pack with the dunlins, but ran in the shallow water, snapping up the tiny shrimp-like crustaceans which came ashore with every ripple. Sanderlings, already in grey winter garments, came to join the throng, for the love of companionship is strong in small waders; the Deeside fisherman classes all three, and any strangers such as stints, as "little birds"; they are hardly worth powder and shot, unless he can rake a crowd and pick the victims up by the dozen. ”

“ A few yards away, on the red rock, a single knot, grey-backed, black-billed and olive-legged, dozed unconcernedly, and soon some fifty or sixty of these inhabitants of the Far North, breeders in Greenland or the little known Taimyr, swept past, followed immediately by many hundreds, which, after a sharp swing, dropped on the sand, each in alighting holding its pointed wings erect for a noticeable interval. ”

“ With them were one or two purple sandpipers, stout little waders who find the companionship of rock hunters more to their taste than the birds which haunt the sandy shore; there are usually some of these two species on the weed-fringed rocks of Hilbre. The curlew sandpiper, a bird with a long, slightly curved bill and conspicuous white upper tail-coverts, was not present, nor was that diminutive dunlin, the little stint; the majority of these two species had no doubt passed in August or September. A few often appear amongst the Dee little birds, but they are never really common. ”

“ High tides in early October are perhaps the best of the year from the bird-watcher's point of view, for though large numbers of northern waders arrive in September, and even in August, there are in the later month hosts of winterers added to the birds of passage. ”

“ Few wader notes are more beautiful than the liquid tluie of the grey plover, known to the local gunners as the silver plover to distinguish it from the golden and green plovers. Both these species are common on the marshes, but seldom come far seaward; the silver is the real shore bird. ”