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 Hast Ruston 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 little 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 willow-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.” 
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