BIRD NOTES 117 



converted muzzle rifle. Force of wind and flight 

 made it fall at my feet. To-night's a regular ruffian ! 



Jan. 4. Weather thickening and growing colder. 

 Frost intense. Broads freezing over. Wildfowl 

 becoming numerous in roads. Dunlins on beach. 

 Snipe going southward. 



Jan. 5. Saw more ducks to-day than ever before 

 in one day in my life. Hundreds upon hundreds. 

 Gulls leading northwards. Ducks working south- 

 wards. Some Mergansers, many Scaups, Wigeon, 

 even (crested) Grebes plentiful, and all manner of 

 birds. Hundreds of Stints (Dunlins) going south. 



Jan. 7. Breydon (salt-water estuary) frozen over. 

 Hooded Crows, sharp set, prowling around captur- 

 ing wounded shore-birds. Coots flocking to salt 

 water. A Coot was shot on North River, but fall- 

 ing into a " wake " in the ice, was not retrieved. 

 Some Hooded Crows hauled it out on the ice and 

 tore it to pieces. Small patches of blood and odd 

 feathers, on the Breydon ice, pointed to avine 

 tragedies of shore-birds dead, wounded, or harried- 

 down victims that had been devoured by Crows. 

 Sanderlings on foreshore. Numbers of Dabchicks 

 wherever open water : several shot. Coots croaking 

 at night on Breydon in severe rime frost. 



[Later on in the month a break in the weather 

 occurred, and the birds scattered, returning to their 

 old haunts.] 



A friend of mine, recently deceased, was an ardent 

 amateur punt gunner. The severest weather found 



