GREEN SANDPIPER. 225 



I have known them killed in the marshes about 

 Thorpe, Lakenham, Cossey, and Bowthorpe, and I have 

 also flushed them from the drains which surround the 

 snipe-grounds on East E-uston common; a rough peaty 

 swamp lying not far from the coast to the extreme 

 north of the county. I find no record of the appearance 

 of this bird on the Broads themselves, which is no doubt 

 owing to those sluggish waters, covered with minute 

 vegetation, and bordered with a dense growth of aquatic 

 herbage, being little suited to their feeding habits. The 

 banks of rivers and lakes have also far less attractions 

 for this species than the shallow winding rivulet, or the 

 " murmuring " brook, of our poet Laureate ',* where, in 

 the little bays that mark the winter's flood, the green 

 sandpiper, with quick nervous actions, feeds by the 

 water's edge under the sheltering bank. Always wary, 

 however, it takes wing on the least alarm, and, as Mr. 

 Harting remarks, from the fact of its usually rising 

 silently and not whistling till at some httle distance 

 the sportsman's attention is only drawn to its presence 

 when too late for a shot. As an instance, also, of 

 its partiality for marsh drains, Mr. Lubbock speaks of 

 its being most numerous in his experience at Norton, 

 in Suffolk, in 1816, where "a range of meadow drains 



* " With many a curve my banks I fret, 

 By many a field and fallow, 

 And many a fairy foreland set 

 With wiUow-weed, and mallow. 



I slip, I slide, I gleam, I glance. 



Among my skimming swallows, 

 I make the netted sunbeams dance 



Against my sandy shallows. 



I chatter, chatter, as I flow. 



To join the brimming river. 

 For men may come and men may go. 

 But I go on for ever." 

 2 G 



