SPOONBILL 21 r 



corrupted from the Low Dutch Lepelaar (Willughby 

 has Lepelaer), and Prof. Newton {I.e.) suggests that 

 it may still survive in the name Poppijlot^ part of 

 Feltwell P^en, which was still undrained in 1853, 

 and would perhaps even then have afforded suitable 

 harbour for a company of Spoonbills had any been 

 left in the country. 



In a "Description of Penbrokeshire," ^ written 

 by George Owen of Henllys in 1603, the author, 

 treating " of the abondance of foule that the country 

 yeeldeth and of the severall sortes thereof" (cap. 16), 

 remarks, "In the bogges breedeth the crane, the 

 byttur, the wild ducke, and teale ... on highe 

 trees the Heronshewes, the Shoveler, and the Wood- 

 questes." Commenting upon this passage {Zool., 

 1895, pp. 241, 245), the Rev. Murray A. Mathew 

 aptly remarks that the former existence of these 

 breeding stations of the Spoonbill accounts for the 

 persistency with which the birds at the present day 

 pay visits to their ancestral haunts ; adding, that 

 flocks occasionally still appear on the mud-flats of 

 Milford Haven, and are not rare in the neighbour- 

 ing county of Cardigan on the river Dovey. On 

 May 16, 1893, a flock of fourteen Spoonbills were 

 seen to settle down in the river Dovey below 

 Glandyfi Castle (Salter, "Birds of Aberystwith," 

 1900, p. 11), and Rodd has recorded the appearance 

 of flocks of more than a dozen at a time in Cornwall. 



' This is the old spelling, and is said to be derived from the Welsh 

 pen, head, and hroch, foam, descriptive of the storm-vexed headlands of 

 that coast. 



