190 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
of specimens obtained are decidedly in immature 
plumage. 
Unlike the stork the spoonbill, though similarly per- 
secuted, does not often betake itself far inland, relying 
mainly for subsistence on the daily renewed feast, afforded 
by the ebb and flow of our tidal waters; and hence the 
large proportion of them that are seen and procured on 
Breydon. The Salthouse marshes, until their drainage 
and embankment in 1851, were also a most favourite 
resort of the spoonbill, as well as of the avocet, a some- 
what similar feeder,* but this spot is no longer adapted 
to their habits. An occasional straggler or two may 
be seen, however, along the flat shores of the wash; 
and Hickling, near Yarmouth, appears to be the only 
broad that has special attractions for this singular 
species. 
* In the “Zoologist” for 1843 (pp. 226, 227), in his “ Notes 
on the Birds of Sussex,’ Mr. A. E. Knox describes the mode of 
feeding of the spoonbill from certain facts supplied him by Mr. 
A. T. Dodd, of Chichester. The latter gentleman, it appears, 
had received a specimen recently killed in that neighbourhood 
from “an intelligent person of whose accuracy of observation he 
entertained no doubt,” and the mode adopted by the bird was 
described as that of “ploughing the soft sand or mud from side 
to side with its bill, to the depth of about a quarter of an inch, by 
which he supposed it collected small marine insects and worms, 
while it continued to work the bill all the time, precisely like a 
duck.” The following note, also, on this subject, from observa- 
tions made in Hungary by Major Thomas Walker, of Wexford, is 
given by Thompson in his “ Birds of Ireland” (vol. ii, p. 180). 
“The motions of the spoonbill are singular, when a number are 
standing in a line on the edge of a stream, they keep streaking 
the bill sideways through the water, and the movement is simul- 
taneous; all the bills being directed up the stream at once, and 
all down it at the same time.” 
