184 BIKDS OP NORFOLK. 



PLATALEA LEUCORODIA, Linnseus. 



WHITE SPOONBILL. 



But for tlie most trustworthy records of Sir Thomas 

 Browne, it would scarcely have been credited at the 

 present time, that this remarkable species was for- 

 merly a resident in East Anglia. This important fact, 

 however, is preserved to ns in the following passage 

 from Sir Thomas' notes on the " Birds of Norfolk," 

 " The Platea or Shovelard,* which build upon the tops 

 of high trees. They formerly built in the hernery at 

 Claxtonf and Reedham ; now at Trimley, in Suffolk. 

 They come in March, and are shot by fowlers, not for 

 their meat, but for the handsomeness of the same ; 

 remarkable in their white colour, copped crown, and 

 spoon or spatule like bill." From so minute a descrip- 

 tion of the species, there can be no doubt as to its 

 identity, but even at that time (1688) it seems, through 

 the persecution of the fowlers, they had ceased to breed 

 in Norfolk, though still found at Trimley, in Suffolk, 

 the "handsomeness" of their plumage rendering their 

 destruction as certain as in more modern times. Pen- 

 nant, whose most elaborate account of the spoonbill. 



* There is no doubt, as suggested by Mr. Lubbock, that the 

 terms shovelard, sholarde, and shoveller, met with in the "House- 

 hold Books" and other early records of birds procured for cuHnary 

 purposes, referred to this species and not, as supposed by some, 

 to the shoveller duck (Anas clypeata), even though the latter is 

 specially noticed by Sir Thomas Browne as "Anas platyrhinchus, 

 a remarkably broad-billed duck." In the Northumberland "House- 

 hold Book" we find the following entry : — " Sholardes to be hadde 

 for my Lordes owne Mees at Pryncypall Feestes, and to be at 

 vid. a pece," being half the then price of bitterns and curlews. 



f Seven and a-half miles from Norwich, near Buckenham 

 Ferry, on the river Yare ; and Keedham, nine miles from Yar- 

 mouth on the same stream. 



