408 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



grass or hidden in the thick herbage and tangled brush- 

 wood at the foot of small alder or sallow bushes ; while 

 at other times, should a chance shot be obtained, the 

 bird is almost invariably flushed near the water's edge, 

 off the mown *^ hoves," or from the sedges fringing the 

 larjjfer reed-beds. I have never known them remain 

 in these numbers for two successive days, but, like wood- 

 cocks on the coast, resting after their nocturnal flight, 

 they afford ample sport at the time. At Surlingham, 

 on the 29th of October, 1853, I fell in with one of these 

 flights, and had I not been more anxious to kill snipes 

 than rails might probably have made a good bag ; but 

 after shooting two couples and a half, which, in spite 

 of their abundance, took some time, so reluctant were 

 they to take wing, I left those marshes for better snipe 

 grounds, to the evident disgust of the marshman's 

 retriever, which, judging by the " expression " of its 

 tail, had been enjoying this game of hide and seek to 

 its heart's content. As a proof, however, of the num- 

 bers that may be killed in this manner, I remember 

 that some years since Mr. Henry Dowson, then of 

 Geldestone, Suffolk, shot ten couples and a half of water- 

 rails at Surlingham, in one day. This was towards 

 the end of September, but that these migratory flights 

 arrive thus early, at times, is proved by the fact that in 

 September, 184.6, Mr. Do well received from Blakeney a 

 water-rail, which had been caught alive on board one 

 of Mr. Brereton's vessels, in the middle of the German 

 Ocean. Others evidently make their passage^ in Novem- 



* Mr. Knox in his " Ornithological Rambles in Sussex " p. 240) 

 notices the arrival of these birds on the beach at Brighton during 

 the period of their vernal migration, at which time specimens are 

 not unfrequently caught alive in the areas and gardens facing the 

 sea, allured during the night with other migratory birds " by the 

 long line of gas-lamps which extends, almost without interruption, 

 from Brunswick Terrace to Kemp Town." 



