LESSON III.


BIRDS OF THE SHORE.

On some parts of our coast we find steep cliffs, with the sea beating
wildly at their feet. Elsewhere there is a sloping beach of sand and
shingle with, perhaps, dark rocks showing at low tide. We explored such
a beach as that in our last lesson. There are long, long stretches of
sand and thin grass in other places, or else mile after mile of muddy,
dreary, salt marshes.

Birds are to be found on every kind of coast. Some, like the Seagull,
wander far and wide. Others keep to the cliffs, and many find all they
need in the wide mud-flats. Such an army is there of these shore birds,
that we cannot even glance at them all in this lesson. So we will take a
few of them only--the Black-headed Gull, the Cormorant, the Ringed
Plover, the Oyster-catcher and the Redshank.

Out of all the many kinds of Gulls, you know the Black-headed one best.
If you live in London you can see and hear him, for he and his cousins
have swarmed along the Thames of late years. They find food there, and
kind people enjoy feeding the screaming birds as they wheel in graceful
flight over the bridges and Embankment.

The country boy, too, sees this Gull. He flies far inland, following the
plough, and he then rids the land of many a harmful grub. Because of
this habit, some people call him the Sea-crow. At all seaside places you