152 



BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



one another, and swim round in a circle, holding their 

 heads towards its centre and their bills plunged into the 

 water perpendicularly and up to the base, while their 

 mandibles are employed in 'bibbling,' to use a Norfolk 

 term. They will swim in this way for ten minutes 

 together, always preserving their relative position on 

 the circumference of the circle they are describing, then 

 after a pause, and perhaps a slight removal of a yard or 

 two, they will resume their occupation." 



Lubbock gives the word "beck" as a provincial name 

 of this species in Norfolk, and his friend, the late C. S. 

 Girdlestone, of Yarmouth, in a letter to Selby, in 1824, 

 (before referred to) on the provincial names of fowl in 

 this county, speaks of shovelers as "always called 

 becks." The same term also occurs in a communication 

 to Bewick ("Brit. Bds.," vol. ii., p. 328, 1826, and 

 later editions), by Mr. Bonfellow, of Stockton, Norfolk, 

 who, in naming the various kinds of fowl and the 

 months in which each are netted in decoys, gives 

 " becks " amongst others, as taken in March and April. 

 At the present time, however, and indeed within the 

 last quarter of a century, I have never known our 

 marshmen or shore gunners allude to this species other- 

 wise than as shovel-spoon-or broad-bills.^ 



The cock shoveler, in common with all the males 

 of the fresh water, and most of the more strictly sea 



* This name for the shoveler and those of "arps" and "cricks" 

 for tufted ducks and teal, also mentioned by Girdlestone and 

 Bonfellow, were names used, I imagine, mainly by decoymen, and 

 probably were introduced into the neighbourhood of Yarmouth, 

 years ago, by old Skelton, a noted Lincolnshire decoyman, who 

 made and worked the Winterton and other decoys in Norfolk early 

 in the present century. These provincialisms do not occur in Ray's 

 " collection of English words not generally used," either in his " List 

 of North," or " South and East country words," published in the 

 same volume as his " Catalogue of English Birds." 



