12 Lost British Birds. 



nobler task to bring back to their country some of the fine 

 types that have been lost ! The Great Bustard, for instance, 

 which is now thriving and even breeding in England in the 

 unnatural conditions of captivity ; it would perhaps cost no 

 more to restore this bird to our country than to slaughter a 

 hundred elephants. It is true that the amusement of slay- 

 ing a century of elephants with explosive bullets would be 

 greater while it lasted ; but it should afford a man a more 

 enduring satisfaction to be able to think that he has accom- 

 plished, or even only attempted, some task for which posterity 

 will bless rather than execrate his memory. 



IV. AVOCET Uecurmrostra avocetta. A handsome black 

 and white bird to which the long, slender, upturned bill gives 

 a somewhat singular appearance. On account of this form of 

 bill it was locally called " shoe-awl," and " shoeing-horn ; " 



also it was known as the yelper, barker, clinker, in allusion 



to its shrill barking note. In habits it is social, lively and 

 playful, and feeds in a curious way, the birds moving on in 

 an even row, swaying their bodies from side to side, with bills 

 immersed in the shallow water ; the action reminding one of a 

 row of mowers mowing a field of grass. Stevenson (Birds of 

 Norfolk) says : "At Salthouse, long prior to the drainage of 

 the marshes and the erection of a raised seabank, the avocets 

 had become exterminated by the same wanton destruction of 

 both birds and eggs as is yearly diminishing the numbers of 

 lesser terns and ringed plover on the adjacent bank." It 

 ceased to breed in England between the years 1822 and 1825. 

 Of former times Stevenson writes : " I have conversed with 

 an octogenarian fowler and marshman, named Pigott, who 

 remembered the ' clinkers ' (as the avocet was there called) 

 breeding in the marshes by the hundreds, and used con- 

 stantly to gather their eggs. Mr. Dowell, also, was informed 

 by the late Harry Overton, a well-known gunner in that 

 neighbourhood, that in his young time he used to gather the 

 avocets' eggs, filling his cap, coat-pockets, and even his 

 stockings ; and the poor people thereabouts made puddings 

 and pancakes of them. The birds were also as recklessly 



