120 NOVEMBER IN BROADLAND. 



is cold work at its best, sitting or standing hour after hour, throwing your live 

 bait into likely spots where Esox lucius may be lurking. One need possess an 

 abnormally strong constitution, and will beside, to follow it up successfully. One 

 angler yonder has a big fellow in hand. How the maddened creature flurries and 

 dashes in his terror. Eagerness and many another emotion are indexed on that 

 flushed face as the fisherman gives and takes, hopes that he may prove victorious 

 in the struggle, fears that the big fish will have his own way in the end, and that 

 look of triumph, as he adroitly gaffs the tired-out monster, is the most marked 

 feature of them all. And it is with justifiable pride he contemplates his huge 

 quarry now lying at his feet, and blesses the stout, stubborn tackle, and his right 

 'good luck,' which proved more than a match for the shark of our Broadland 

 waters. 



A slight breeze ruffles the face of the cold-looking waters, and rustles through 

 the rush and reedy broad-margins, fluttering the dry leaves and rattling the equally 

 dry stems into strange rustling music. The reeds have not so much altered in 

 general appearance yet as in colour. A few of the lanceolate leaves have dropped, 

 and the feathery head-tufts have assumed the woolliness that tells of a full age 

 and a speedy dissolution. On yonder tuft a couple of small brown birds are busily 

 feeding. The juvenile molluscs, which, in the sunny days crawled up their stems 

 for a short siesta, have gone below, and the handsome bearded tits, for such are 

 they, must perforce be thankful for a vegetarian dietary, and so they are taking 

 their fill of reed-seeds. They are merry creatures lively and musical even in 

 winter, making the reed-bed ring with their clear, flute-like ping, ping. Unfor- 

 tunately for the reed pheasant, as the Norfolkese call him, the collector is always 

 eager for a specimen of this indigenous bird of Broadland, who but for persecu- 

 tion and slaughter, would remain with us all the year round. If our fenmen should 

 exterminate the native race, it will become lost to us, for we have no migrants of- 

 this species putting in an appearance in winter. The time is gone for fifties to 

 be seen together here. 



What a host of birds we miss to-day ! Not a reed-warbler, swallow, martin, 

 or whitethroat is seen. The rattling notes of the common wren, hunting in the 

 alders, and the chinking song of the redbreast have become familiar, and the 

 harsher cries of the berry-feeding Turdidce of which the fieldfare and redwing 

 are the most vociferous representatives, are heard on every side where hedgerows 

 trend. There are some wildfowl on the Broad; they are apparently napping, for 

 their heads are snugly tucked under wing. Their small size unmistakeably decides 

 them to be teal. A crested grebe, disporting and fishing near by, disturbs them; 



