238 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
the only breeding stations of which we have any record, 
are Winterton and Horsey, and a spot near the Seven- 
mile House, on the Bure or North River, all in the 
neighbourhood of Yarmouth, as well as the far-famed 
Salthouse marshes, near Blakeney, their last haunt in 
the Eastern Counties.* Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear, 
from their own observations, wrote in 1824 that “ during 
the breeding season the avocet used to frequent the 
marshes at Winterton; and in the summer of 1816 we 
saw one there which had young ;” so that its extinction 
in that locality, if not actually effected in that year, 
most probably occurred very shortly after. 
At Horsey, as Mr. Rising informs me, they continued 
to breed certainly as late as 1819, and probably a year 
or so longer, but after that time “when the marsh 
grounds, which had been enclosed, were either converted 
into arable or were more or less frequented by men and 
cattle, the birds forsook their haunts, and they were 
lost to us altogether.” Their nests were placed in the 
lower parts of the marshes, adjoining the warren, over 
which the sea had been, and which “retained more or 
less of the salt left thereby, and where samphire used 
to grow.” <A few visited Horsey in the summer of 1824, 
but did not remain to breed; and since that date Mr. 
Rising cannot remember having seen above half a dozen 
specimens, and those merely stragglers on their migra- 
tory course. Of the condition of this wild district, prior 
to the changes effected through embankment and drain- 
age by the late and present owner of the estate, the late 
Mr. C. S. Girdlestone, of Yarmouth, thus wrote to Mr. 
* Pennant says “we have seen them in considerable numbers 
in the breeding season, near Fossdyke Wash, in Lincolnshire ;” and 
in the history of that county, in Gough’s edition of Camden’s 
“ Brittannia,” I find the following passage—‘ Opposite Forsdyke 
Wash, during summer, are vast numbers of avocettas, called there 
‘yelpers’ from their cry.” 
