SCOLOPAClDiE. 



The late Mr. H. Stevenson has published an interesting account of the former 

 breeding of this species in Norfolk. Writing in 1870, he says * : — " When 

 examining a recently killed specimen of the Avocet, so great a prize now a days 

 to the local collector, it seems hard to believe that such a remarkable species 

 should have bred regularly in this county until within the last half century. Yet 

 that this was the case we knoAv from the living testimony of both sportsmen and 

 professional gunners, in whose younger days this bird was comparatively common. 

 Sir Thomas Browne, unfortunately, gives scarcely any information as to the 

 localities frequented by it in his time, merely speaking of the ' shoeing-horn ' as 

 ' a summer marsh-bird and not unfrequent in Marshland,' from which, how^ever, 

 one may infer that it was then a denizen of the extreme western side of the 

 county as well as of the coast-line to the north and east. From later authors the 

 only breeding stations of which we have any record, are Winterton and Horsey, 

 and a spot near the Seven-mile House, on the Bure or North River, all in 

 the neighbourhood of Yarmouth, as well as the far-famed Salthouse marshes, near 

 Blakeney, their last haunt in the Eastern Counties." 



After giving details respecting the three breeding stations first named, 

 Mr. Stevenson continues f : — " At Salthouse, long prior to the drainage of the 

 marshes and the erection of a raised sea-bank, the Avocets had become 

 exterminated by the same wanton destruction of both birds and eggs as is 

 yearly diminishing the numbers of Lesser Terns and Kinged Plover on the 

 adjacent beach. I have conversed vidth an octogenarian fowler and marshman 

 named Piggott, who remembered the ' Clinkers ' (as the Avocet was there called) 

 breeding in the marshes ' by hundreds,' and used constantly to gather their eggs. 

 Mr. Dowell, also, was informed by the late Harry Overton, a well known gunner, 

 in that neighbourhood, that in his young time he used to gather the Avocet's 

 eggs, filling his cap, coat pockets, and even his stockings ; and the poor people 

 thereabouts made imddivgs and ])ancakes of iJion. The birds were also as 

 recklessly destroyed, for the gunners, to unload their punt guns, would sometimes 

 fire at and kill ten or twelve at a shot. No wonder, then, if the Avocets thus 

 constantly persecuted gradually became scarce. It is stated, moreover, by 

 Mr. Lubbock that their feathers were much sought after to make artificial flies. 

 Here as in the previous instances, at Horsey and Winterton, it is difficult to fix 

 the exact date of extinction, but it is probable from the following particulars 

 kindly communicated by Mr. AA'. J. Cubitt, of this city, that it occurred between 



* ' Birds of Norfolk,' vol. ii. pp. 237, 238. 

 t Pp. 240, 241 



