WICKEN FEN. rarer 
burnt out. A friend of mine secured it one year, but as a Sniping ground 
the Fen was disappointing. I never saw as many Snipe in the winter 
as in the spring; six were the most we ever put up on a single day. Asa 
rule you might walk miles without flushing a bird, but then the bird flushed 
might be a good one. It was thus that I once stumbled on a Bittern. In 
the hard winter of 1891 I had tramped ten miles without a shot, and was 
just on the point of giving it up, when there was a sudden commotion in 
a narrow belt of reeds beside the lode, and up blundered a monstrous bird. 
It was morally impossible to miss it, for it circled slowly round, and I was 
soon cautiously approaching it as it lay struggling on the ground. The 
shooting was a more simple matter than the getting it home. A stiff 
wind was blowing, and as I had lost my handkerchief earlier in the day 
it was impossible to tie it together, and I had to carry it as best I could, 
with its wings blowing about like the sails of a windmill, and glad indeed was 
I to reach Burwell, and stow it away in a grocer’s box. 
Other long winter tramps were not equally successful. You always 
got a shot just when you had ceased to expect it, and in this way I once 
missed six Duck that rose bang under my nose, to the unspeakable amusement 
of a friend, who had accompanied me for the sake of the grind. Still, the 
exhilarating sensations of the walk, enhanced as they were by the friendly 
attitude of the natives—from the old eel-spearer on the Fen to the newspaper 
boy at Burwell, who always provided us with the latest ‘special ’”’—seldom 
failed to console us for our many failures, and leave us with the pleasantest 
recollections of the place. 
In fact, if Wicken Fen can no longer produce the wonderful ornitho- 
logical varieties of former days, there is, nevertheless, especially in the 
summer, still sufficient interest attaching to it to well repay the difficulties 
connected with a visit. The place, thanks to the public spirit of certain 
naturalists, is now said to be safe from the encroachments of the land 
reclaimer, and it is intended to be kept as a refuge for our rarer birds. 
Report says that even Bitterns have since bred on it, and reared their 
young unmolested; and, as the establishment of bird-sanctuaries is probably 
by far the best method of bird protection, it is to be hoped that the existing 
arrangements will long continue to remain in force. 
