208 IN DUTCH WATER MEADOWS 



and smaller, but proportionally stouter than their fork- 

 tailed cousins, the Common Tern. 



The nest of the Godwits, of which we found more 

 than one, unlike those of the Avocet, which lays its 

 eggs in a bare hollow of trampled turf, were thickly 

 lined with dry grasses. 



The birds themselves 'which, by the bye, were 

 once/ writes Sir Thomas Browne, 1 'accounted the 

 daintiest dish in England, and, I think, for the bigness, 

 of the biggest price ' with their long beaks, were 

 conspicuous and unmistakable at almost any distance, 

 in their bright summer dress of brownish red and 

 white. The female, as with the Hawk, is the larger 

 bird. 



In the deep blue water of an irregular natural pool, 

 in striking contrast to the formal artificial ditches of 

 the drained lands, we counted at one time ten separate 

 species of water-birds together, and not unfrequently 

 had five or six kinds in the field of the glass at one 

 time. Nearer home we crawled through copses hedged 

 with tall green reeds, to watch the Ictarine Warblers, 

 seldom seen in England, but here common. The 

 capricious Nightingale, plentiful almost everywhere on 

 the mainland opposite, is, we were assured, almost, if 

 not quite, unknown in Texel. 



It is always interesting to trace in everyday life 

 survivals of old ideas and customs underlying modern 

 thoughts and habits. It is not often that the old and 

 the new are to be found in such grotesque conjunction 



1 On 'Norfolk Birds,' vol. iii. of Works. Bell. 



