204 IN DUTCH WATER MEADOWS 



which, when the bird is in the air, they seem a part. 

 The body is exceptionally flat, so much so that an 

 Avocet flying looks as if it could have no stomach. 



In spite of their slender make they are courageous, 

 and if offended fly at more stoutly-built birds. A 

 couple of days later, on another marsh, we watched for 

 ten minutes or more one of them vociferously attack- 

 ing a Brown-headed Gull, who perhaps because it had 

 been sucking eggs, and conscience had made a coward of 

 it was evidently very anxious to shake off its pursuer. 

 The Avocet circled upwards like a Falcon, and swooped 

 with a scream again and again at the Gull from above, 

 never, so far as we could make out, actually striking it, 

 as the scarcely heavier Richardson's Skua would have 

 done if offended, but swerving sharply to the right or 

 left when within a foot or so of its enemy. 



Not far from the flowery slope on which, ' at ease, 

 reclined in rustic state,' we sat to lunch and meditate, 

 was a ditch rather wider than some one of the arteries 

 of the polder. The mud of successive cleanings had 

 been thrown out on the side nearest to us, and had 

 dried into a bank a little above the general level. It 

 was what in old days was known in the Fens and 

 Broads as a 'hill' a gathering-place of Ruffs, birds 

 which once, like Avocets, were common in England, 

 and are now scarcely less rare. 



More than once we counted nineteen or twenty of 

 these curious birds together on the hill, and many 

 others constantly came and went. Much has been 

 written of the fights of Ruffs, which unlike most, if 



