INTRODUCTION. Ivii 



Warbler (Salicaria locustellaj also, in such few spots, 

 still maintains a precarious footing — perhaps it is even 

 more abundant than one is apt to believe, for its shy 

 and skulking habits avoid observation. Ruffs and 

 Reeves and Godwits (Limosa melanura) have vanished 

 as inhabitants of the district, but the Redshank (Totayius 

 calidris) was induced to return to its old haunts by the 

 extraordinary flood of November, 1852, which burst the 

 river bank near Southery, and laid many thousand acres 

 under water for more than six months, making a paradise 

 for wild fowl of all kinds, and furnishing ornithologists 

 of this generation with a vision of times past and gone. 

 This same flood acted in like manner upon the Black 

 Tern (Sterna fissipes) and the Black-headed Gull (Larus 

 ridibundusj , both of which, in 1853, stayed to breed in 

 places which had been so long abandoned by them, that 

 their names even were unknown in the land. The Snipe 

 (8colopax gallinago) , the Water-Rail (Ballus aquaticus) , 

 and the Spotted Crake (Grex porzana) still, but in very 

 small numbers, frequent the Fens for the purpose of 

 breeding, and with them concludes the list of those 

 birds which still abide in the district of which they 

 must have been at one time most characteristic ; for 

 the Heron (Ardea cinerea), which formerly had a large 

 and thriving establishment on the borders of Feltwell 

 and Hockwold Fens, where the nests were placed either 

 among the sedge on the ground, or built in low sallow- 

 bushes, some sixty years since emigrated to a wood 

 of lofty fir-trees at Didlington, whence the members 

 of the diminished society spread themselves over the 

 adjoining country to seek with difficulty the living their 

 forefathers had found so much more abundantly. 



On the other hand, in the room of those species whose 



place knows them no more, very many new denizens of 



the district have made their appearance. Spots which 



had only heard the hurried twitterings of the Sedge-bird 



h 



