Lost British Birds*. 1 5 



continued to breed, Stevenson says : " Not a thought of the 

 extermination of the species seems to have passed through 

 their minds. Either they were entirely indifferent about 

 the matter, or else they believed that since, as long as they 

 could remember, there had always been bustards on their 

 brecks, therefore, bustards there would always be." 



VI. BLACK-TAILED GODWIT Limosa melanura. This 



BLACK TOILED 

 GODWIT 



fine game bird, like the avocet that preceded it by a few 

 years in that last sad migration, is an inhabitant of the 

 waste and solitary fens and meres. As Kobert Mudie so 

 well says, " They give life to the places which men 

 neglect ; " and it is most curious to note that all these 

 waders and denizens of the sandy shore and marshy flats 

 plover, curlew, whimbrel, godwit, sandpiper, and stilt 

 which, as Mudie again says, " are associated with wildness 

 and infertility," are of a loquacious disposition, with wild, 

 clear, penetrating voices of such an indescribable quality, 

 that he who hears them is exhilarated and lifted above 



