2o8 The Field Naturalist's Quarterly Aug. 



now spoiling our fuchsia-blooms irritates our nerves, whereas 

 three months ago we gladly welcomed its unwieldy presence, 

 hanging heavily from a precocious gooseberry bloom, as 

 helping to foretell the coming spring. The aimless zig- 

 zagging of the House-flies in our study, as we pause in 

 writing, causes no such pleasure as that with which we 

 watched the equally inexplicable dance of the winter 

 gnats on the south side of a fence last Christmas-time. 

 We liked to hear the weird note of the lone Curlew as 

 he floated far up in the clouds over our boat yesterday, but 

 we certainly blessed him not last October when his warning 

 cry revealed our presence to a bunch of Teal which we had 

 been carefully stalking, crawling to them and wetting knees 

 and chests in doing so in vain ! 



It is rather a mystery why more Common Teal do not 

 breed in the Broad districts. They used to form the prin- 

 cipal take in the Winterton Decoy ; and there are special 

 Teal ponds at East Somerton where I have seen some three 

 hundred of these dainty little ducks congregated together, 

 and once, had it not been for the reed-screens between us, 

 I was within touching distance of several. In those days — 

 the early 'Seventies — many more pairs reared their young 

 in Broadland, and it was no uncommon thing to find their 

 nests when we were hunting for Pheasants' eggs on the 

 marsh walls — this was of course before the days of game 

 farms and general egg-dealing. But now they, as well as the 

 Garganey or Summer Teal, are on the decrease, and this 

 seems to be the case throughout the eastern counties ; al- 

 though why the Shovellers, on the other hand, should have 

 shown a revived interest in our neighbourhood as a breed- 

 ing-station seems curious, unless it be that they are of a 

 more venturesome and confiding nature than the Teal, to 

 which idea the fact of their young occasionally coming to 

 feed with tame ducks seems to lend colour. But then, why 

 should they have deserted us in springtime to such an 

 extent as they certainly did some fifteen or twenty years 

 ago ? The Coots, which in winter found safety in numbers 

 and congregated together in the middle of the open Broad, 

 are now scattered round the edges thereof in pairs, and shun 

 the day in the reedy recesses where they may now and then 



