AVOCET. 241 
date of extinction, but it is probable from the following 
particulars kindly communicated by Mr. W. J. Cubitt, 
of this city, that it occurred between 1822 and 1825, 
as he remembers, about that time, visiting Salthouse, in 
summer, with Mr. Jary, of South Walsham, when two 
or three couples were shot, and a boy waded through 
the swamp and brought out a young bird. A single 
bird was left, which he understood was seen there 
for some time after, but he fears that this expedition 
saw the last of the avocets. They bred on the salt- 
marshes, subject to constant inundations from the sea, 
beyond the shingly beach, and consequently the ground 
was full of holes and soft places, which rendered it 
difficult to reach their breeding sites. From the 
records of specimens killed subsequently to that date, 
at Salthouse, it seems that until those marshes were 
altogether reclaimed in 1851, stragglers from time to 
time still visited their old haunt, on their migratory 
passage; but of late the few that have appeared on 
our coast have been met with either on Breydon or in 
the neighbourhood of Lynn. In Sir William Hooker’s 
MS. one is said to have been shot at Palling, near 
Yarmouth, on the 3rd of May, 1831; and in the same 
year, as Mr. Joseph Clarke informs me, three were killed 
at Salthouse of which two are now in the Saffron 
Walden Museum. 
In the “ Zoologist ” for 1843 (pp. 148 and 182), Mr. 
W.R. Fisher records two examples as killed on Breydon 
in May and July, 1842; and on the 28th of March, 
1843, a female was also shot on Breydon, and two 
others were subsequently seen on the same “muds,” 
of which one was killed. Of the first of these, which 
was only wounded in the wing, and ran very swiftly 
when pursued, Mr. Fisher states that “the gizzard 
contained some of the small black beetles which abound 
in the mud banks of the river, and what appeared 
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