408 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
grass or hidden in the thick herbage and tangled brush- 
wood at the foot of small alder or sallow bushes; while 
at other times, should a chance shot be obtained, the 
bird is almost invariably flushed near the water’s edge, 
off the mown “hoves,”’ or from the sedges fringing the 
larger reed-beds. I have never known them remain 
in these numbers for two successive days, but, like wood- 
cocks on the coast, resting after their nocturnal flight, 
they afford ample sport at the time. At Surlingham, 
on the 29th of October, 1853, I fell in with one of these 
flights, and had I not been more anxious to kill snipes 
than rails might probably have made a good bag; but 
after shooting two couples and a half, which, in spite 
of their abundance, took some time, so reluctant were 
they to take wing, I left those marshes for better snipe 
grounds, to the evident disgust of the marshman’s 
retriever, which, judging by the “expression” of its 
tail, had been enjoying this game of hide and seek to 
its heart’s content. As a proof, however, of the num- 
bers that may be killed in this manner, I remember 
that some years since Mr. Henry Dowson, then of 
Geldestone, Suffolk, shot ten couples and a half of water- 
rails at Surlingham, in one day. This was towards 
the end of September, but that these migratory flights 
arrive thus early, at times, is proved by the fact that in 
September, 1846, Mr. Dowell received from Blakeney a 
water-rail, which had been caught alive on board one 
of Mr. Brereton’s vessels, in the middle of the German 
Ocean. Others evidently make their passage* in Novem- 
* Mr. Knox in his “ Ornithological Rambles in Sussex” p. 240) 
notices the arrival of these birds on the beach at Brighton during 
the period of their vernal migration, at which time specimens are 
not unfrequently caught alive in the areas and gardens facing the 
sea, allured during the night with other migratory birds “ by the 
long line of gas-lamps which extends, almost without interruption, 
from Brunswick Terrace to Kemp Town.” 
