In Dutch Water Meadows. 1 19 



They were cowards compared with the little Black 

 Terns, which, as we stooped beside their eggs, dashed 

 at us with the recklessness of Skuas. 



They are beautiful birds as seen from below, with 

 slate-grey wings and bodies of shining black, shorter 

 and smaller, but proportionally stouter than their 

 fork-tailed cousins, the Common Tern. 



The nests 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-by, were 

 once," writes Sir Thomas Browne,* "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 every-day life 

 survivals of old ideas and customs underlying 

 modern thoughts and habits. It is not often that 

 * On " Norfolk Birds," vol. iii. of Works. Bell. 



