SCOLOPACID/E. 



585 



t' 





A 



THE RUFF. 



Machetes pugnax (L'nna;us). 



The Rufi' and Reeve — the latter being the name apphed to the 

 female — used formerly to breed in many of the marshy districts of 

 England ; but drainage, and the practice of capturing the birds for 

 the table in spring, when game is out of season, have so far diminished 

 their numbers that they are now little more than visitors on the spring 

 migration, and again more abundantly in autumn; a few being 

 occasionally met with during the winter. In Lincolnshire, where 

 the species was once plentiful, a female was shot from her nest — 

 in defiance of the law— in 1882, and in Norfolk a few harassed 

 birds sometimes rear their broods in spite of the endeavours ot col- 

 lectors to obtain the adults with the egg^. In the west of England 

 the Ruff is decidedly rarer than on the east, and the same may be 

 said of Scotland, where it occurs from ]]er\vickshirc to the Orkneys 



