COMMON REDSHANK. 209 
common and lesser tern; but, at the present time, 
this species is but thinly scattered along our coast 
line, a pair here and there remaining to rear their 
young if happily located on preserved ground, and even 
in the most favourable portions of the broads its 
numbers are few indeed in comparison with former 
times. I am happy to state, however, that since the 
spring of 1865, from some cause for which I am 
quite unable to account, I have heard of more nests at 
Hickling and Horsey, near Yarmouth, and amongst 
that network of smaller broads that border on the 
Bure and the Ant, than have been known, even in 
such tempting spots, for some years. At Hoveton, in 
1867, I had the pleasure of seeing several pairs on 
the wing, mingling their shrill notes with the wail of 
the lapwings, as I searched for their nests in the rough 
marshes, but here protection is afforded to both parents 
and eggs, and the owner of this birds’ paradise, as a 
keen naturalist, is more than repaid for his hospitality. 
During the same summer, also, and again in 1868, in 
sailing from Norwich to Yarmouth, I was agreeably 
surprised to hear the notes of these birds, and watch 
them on the wing at many points of the river, a fact 
sufficiently unusual now-a-days, in that neighbourhood, 
to be remarked by the reed-cutters and watermen on the 
river. On the western side of the county* they still 
breed regularly on Hast Walton common, near West- 
acre, one of the few “wet” commons remaining in 
Norfolk, and in this unlooked for swamp, bordering 
upon the old bustard country, I saw some five or six 
pairs in May, 1867, and learned from Mr. Hamond’s 
keeper that they were even more plentiful during the 
previous summer, 
* Mr. Southwell obtained some nests in this district in 1854; 
and Mr. A. Newton tells me that the late Mr. Selby’s collection 
’ contains specimens taken at Didlington, in 1856. 
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