24 AVOSET 
England,—“ Cobbler’s-awl,” from its likeness to the tool so called, 
and “Scooper,” because it resembled the scoop with which boatmen 
threw water on their sails. The legs, though long, are not extra- 
ordinarily so, and the feet, which are webbed, bear a small hind toe. 
This species was of old time plentiful in England, though 
doubtless always restricted to certain localities. Charleton in 
1668 says that when a boy he had shot not a few on the Severn, 
and Plot mentions it so as to lead one to suppose ‘that in his time 
(1686) it bred in Staffordshire, while Willughby (1676) knew of it 
as being in winter on the eastern coast, and Pennant in 1769 found 
it in great numbers opposite to Fossdyke Wash in Lincolnshire, and - 
described the birds as hovering over the sportsman’s head like Lap- 
wings. In this district they were called “Yelpers” from their 
cry ;1 but whether that name was elsewhere applied is uncertain. 
At the end of the last century they frequented Romney Marsh in 
Kent, and in the first quarter of the present century they bred in 
various suitable spots in Suffolk and Norfolk,—the last place known 
to have been inhabited by them being Salthouse, where the people 
made puddings of their eggs, while the birds were killed for the 
sake of their feathers, which were used in making artificial flies for 
fishing. The extirpation of this settlement took place between 
1822 and 1825 (cf. Stevenson, Birds of Norfolk, i. pp. 240, 241).? 
There is some evidence of their having bred so lately as about 
1840 at the mouth of the Trent (cf. Clarke and Roebuck, Vert. 
Fauna of Yorkshire, p. 72). The Avoset’s mode of nesting is 
much like that of the Sri_t, and the eggs are hardly to be dis- 
tinguished from those of the latter but by their larger size, the 
bird being about as big as a LAPWING, white, with the exception 
of its crown, the back of the neck, the inner scapulars, some of 
the wing-coverts and the primaries, which are black, while the legs 
are of a fine light blue. It seems to get its food by working its 
bill from side to side in shallow pools, and catching the small 
crustaceans or larvee of insects that may be swimming therein, but 
not, as has been stated, by sweeping the surface of the mud or 
sand—a process that would speedily destroy the delicate bill by 
friction.. Two species of Avoset, &. americana and &. andina, are 
found in the New World; the former, which ranges so far to the 
northward as the Saskatchewan, is distinguished by its light 
cinnamon-coloured head, neck, and breast, and the latter, confined 
so far as known to the mountain lakes of Chili, has no white on 
the upper parts except the head and neck. Australia produces a 
1 Gf. “Yarwhelp” (Gopwir) and “Yaup” or ‘‘Whaup” (CuRLEW). 
“© Barker” and ‘‘Clinker’’ seem to have been names used in Norfolk. 
2 The same kind of lamentable destruction has of late been carried on in 
Holland and Denmark, to the extirpation probably of the species in each 
country. 
