AVOCET. 239 
Selby* in 1824—“ Horsey is a most extraordinary place 
for all sorts of wild birds, though nothing as good as it 
was ten years ago. It is a desolate spot, and duty at 
church is performed only once a month, and in winter 
this place is scarcely approachable.” In the same letter, 
also, the avocet or “‘shoe-awl,” is described as still breed- 
ing there, but, as shown before, reclamation had already 
banished them with other contemporary species, whose 
numbers had been slowly but surely diminished by other 
and less justifiable causes. Mr. Lubbock, in 1845, speak- 
ing of the numbers of this species that formerly bred at 
Horsey, remarks that it “has not done so of late years,” t 
but adds, “on the authority of an old and respectable 
fen-man, it bred regularly forty years ago near the 
Seven-mile House, on the North River; occurs still 
sometimes on Breedon. The last I know of positively 
in the fens, was a small flock which visited Sutton 
broad in 1828.” As at the present day only stragglers, 
or at most a pair or two, are ever seen on our coast 
at one time, it is not improbable that the small flock 
here mentioned reappeared in that neighbourhood with 
some intention of resuming their old quarters, if undis- 
turbed; and we may conclude, therefore, that they 
had altogether ceased to breed in the “ Broad’? district, 
some time between the years 1824 and 1828. It seems 
* For the privilege of extracting this and other passages on 
Norfolk ornithology, from the correspondence of the late Mr. Selby, 
I am indebted to the kindness of his daughter Mrs. Antrobus, at 
the solicitation of my friend Mr. Alfred Newton. 
+ Mr. Lubbock also refers to a communication by the Rev. E. 
Ventris, of Cambridge, to the “ Magazine of Natural History ” 
for 1836, in which the writer states that he had been recently 
informed that the egret “ annually visited Horsey, in Norfolk, till 
about twelve years ago, and that since that time it has disappeared.” 
This unquestionably was a mistake, the avocet and not the egret 
being intended, as before shown (p. 150) in my remarks on that 
rare visitant. 
