264 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
Two, evidently fresh laid, were shown me on the 16th 
of May, and four others, but slightly sat upon, on the 
6th of June. I have also notes of some taken in other 
seasons during the latter month.* As long since as 
1824, Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear attributed the 
growing scarcity of this species in the Norfolk marshes 
to birds and eggs being alike eagerly sought after for the 
London market, and both, of course, for edible pur- 
poses. A curious instance of the attachment of the 
female for her eggs is also given by the same authors, 
who state that a reeve was caught on her nest by the 
warrener’s boy at Winterton, in 1817, and carried by 
him to his master, who ordered her to be set at liberty ; 
the next day she was found on her nest again. 
As to the date of the appearance of these birds, in 
spring, Mr. Fisher, in recording “the times of arrival of 
some of the summer birds of passage at Yarmouth in 
1843” (“ Zoologist,” p. 248), gives the 25th of March as 
the first appearance of reeves, but adds, “I saw no ruffs 
for some days afterwards; may they not arrive sepa- 
rately, the reeves first?” + This is most probably the case, 
* According to Montagu the “reeves begin laying their eggs 
the first or second week in May,” and he had found their nests 
with young “as early as the 3rd of June.” * * * When the 
reeves begin to lay, both those and the ruffs are least shy and so 
easily caught that a fowler assured him “he could with certainty 
take every bird on the fen in the season.” And no doubt this 
system of making “two seasons,” as adopted by some fen-men, thus 
verifying, as our author says, “the fable of the goose and the 
golden eggs,” was the main cause of their diminished numbers ; 
whilst after all, the birds taken in spring “frequently pine and 
will not readily fatten.” 
+ In the “Zoologist” for 1868 (p. 1284), Mr. Cordeaux states that 
on the 20th May he saw “ eight birds, like large sandpipers, feeding 
in a fifty acre grass field, adjoining the Humber.” Ofthese, bya 
very long cross shot, he killed three, which all proved to be reeves 
in good condition and plumage, and the remainder he believes to 
