AVOCET. 237 
Mr. Harting who, under shelter of a sea wall, had 
on one occasion the rare chance of observing the actions 
of three greenshanks feeding on a mud-flat, remarks 
(“‘ Birds of Middlesex,” p. 181), “they placed the bill 
upon the surface, the under mandible almost parallel 
with the mud, and as they advanced, scooped from side 
to side after the fashion of the avocet, leaving a curious 
zigzag line impressed upon the mud.” Their food 
consists of mollusks, insects, and small crustacea. 
RECURVIROSTRA AVOCETTA, Linneus. 
AVOCET. 
When examining a recently killed specimen of the 
Avocet, so great a prize now a days to the local col- 
lector, it seems hard to believe that such a remarkable 
species should have bred regularly in this county until 
within the last half century. Yet that this was the 
case we know from the living testimony of both sports- 
men and professional gunners, in whose younger days 
this bird was comparatively common. Sir Thomas 
Browne, unfortunately, gives scarcely any information 
as to the localities frequented by it in his time, merely 
speaking of the “ shoeing-horn” as “a summer marsh- 
bird and not unfrequent in Marshland,’* from which, 
however, one may infer that it was then a denizen of the 
extreme western side of the county as well as of the 
coast-line to the north and east. From later authors 
* In a letter to Dr. Merrett in 1668 (Wilkin’s edition, vol. i. 
p: 400), Sir Thomas describes this bird as “a shoeing-horn or 
barker, from the figure of the bill and barking note; a long made 
bird, of white and blackish colour; fin footed; a marsh bird; and 
not rare some times of the year in Marshland.” 
