136 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



being a resident species in Norfolk, and of its breeding' in 

 some numbers in the neighbourhood of Yarmouth. Hunt 

 in his "British Ornithology" (1815) referring to Mon- 

 tagu's statement that all his enquiries had failed to estab- 

 lish the fact of the shoveler still nesting in Lincolnshire, 



" It seems to me that popeler is only a corruption (by common 

 metatliesis) of "lopeler" — i.e., Lepelar Dutch, Lepler German, 

 which are both equivalent to Lolt'ler — 'from Loffel, a spoon or 

 shovel. I find among German names for Anas clypeata, Loffelente 

 (i.e., spoon-duck), and Leppelschnute {i.e., shovel-snout), while, 

 according to Bechstein, " Anas glaucion" is also called Spatelente, 

 Loffelente, and Leppelscheute (the last looking like a misprint for 

 Lepelschnute). "Lepeleend," i.e., shovel-duck, is the Dutch name, 

 or one of them, for Anas clypeata.''' The same authority, however, 

 points out that, on the other hand, the words shoveler and spoonbill 

 have been so completely " mixed up" by early authors that it is next 

 to impossible to determine whether the species referred to by 

 any writer is the duck or the wader — Anas Clypeata or Platalea 

 leucorodia. In the above edition of the " Prompt. 2Jarv." I find 

 the following entries : — " Popelere byrd (or schovelerd infra), 

 Pojyulus" ; and in a foot note Mr. Way remarks, "It appears 

 subsequently that the Popelere was considered by the com- 

 piler of the Promptorium to be the same as the shoveler duck, 

 Anas clypeata, Linn." The only other passage, however, in the 

 work, so far as I can ascertain, in which the word popeler occurs 

 and to which, I presume, Mr. Way alludes by the expression "sub- 

 sequently," appears under the head of schovelerd, thus, " schovelerd, 

 or popler, byrd (schoveler, or poplerd, s. schoues bee, or popler 

 byrd, p.) Populus." And if on this is founded Mr. Way's belief that tlie 

 compiler — [a Dominican Friar, of Lynn Episcopi, Norfolk, a.d. 1440, 

 who might be presumed, therefore, to know something of the 

 provincial names of birds on the Lynn and Hunstanton coast] — 

 associated the term popeler with Anas clypeata, I imagine most 

 ornithologists would decide in favour of the spoonbill (Platalea), 

 supported, as such impression would be by the association of 

 popelers with herons in the L'Estrange Accounts ; whilst Sir Thomas 

 Browne {circa, 1666) plainly distinguishes "the Platea or shovelarde, 

 which build upon the tops of high trees," from " Anas platyrhinchos, 

 a remarkably broad billed duck," the only allusion to this species in 

 his list of Norfolk birds. To whichever species then we may assign 



