BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



OF THE 



NORFOLK BROADLAND 



CHAPTER I 



THE SPECKLED THRUSHES 



The speckled birds of the coppice and field are of varying 

 degrees of distinction and attractiveness. 



The familiar Song Thrush, or " Mavish," as the fenmen 

 call him, is our dearest songster. He is, moreover, the most 

 delicate of the speckled tribe, although he is the earliest 

 riser of all the birds, singing of a morning before the lark. 

 When the grey mists of February soften the outlines of 

 the farm-buildings so that they hang in the air like castles, 

 and the lone trees rise from the upland like weird ghosts, 

 the mavis begins to sing his beautiful love-song with its 

 series of triple notes ending abruptly with "pretty boy." 

 He delights to sit of a morning on a bare sprig of thorn-tree 

 overhanging a holl, and pour forth his song ere he goes a- 

 hunting for worms, startling them from the soft ground, and 

 killing them (when caught) as a heron kills an eel. After 

 eating but half of his slippery quarry mayhap, he goes a- 

 dodman gathering, carrying his prey to some stone-anvil by 

 the roadside to crack the husk that guards the succulent 

 flesh. And if dodman-meat taste as sweetly to him as the 



