BIRD NOTES 57 



THE COMMON SCOTER 



In severe winters considerable numbers of Common 

 Scoters ((Edemia nigra) may be observed frequenting 

 the roadstead north of the Britannia Pier. Some- 

 times in a long straggling line a large flock is seen 

 bobbing upon the waves, drifting with the tide, 

 sleeping, feeding, or preening as the case may be, 

 occasionally joining up in flight, winging northwards 

 for a mile or more, and settling again, to drift 

 townwards, and rarely inshore, until the hopeful 

 gunner is half tempted to draw bead upon them. 

 It is an exceeding rare circumstance for one to be 

 caught napping ; odd birds taking to Breydon are 

 now and again shot in snowy weather. The 

 " bottom," sandy and shifting as it is, has in places 

 beds of molluscs, for which these birds remain in 

 the neighbourhood. In one place nearly a mile of 

 mussel ground is known, and in places, notably in 

 the Ham at Gorleston, a large area is frequented by 

 the radiated trough shell (Mactra stultorum). The 

 mussel referred to is Modiola modiolus, locally known 

 as the horse mussel. 



During a short spell of calm weather early in the 

 'eighties a gunner carted his gunpunt across the 



