416 THE AYOCET 



THE AVOCET 

 [F. C. R JOURDAIN] 



We are accustomed to look with equanimity upon the disappear- 

 ance from our list of breeding species of such birds as the avocet, 

 ruff, and blacktailed-godwit, as the inevitable accompaniment of the 

 drainage of our fen-lands and the reclamation of our marshes. This 

 is of course a very comfortable doctrine for those who believe it, but 

 after a visit to one or two of the colonies of avocets which still exist 

 in Holland, one's confidence in it is rudely shaken. For here, where 

 every yard of mud is competed for with the sea and converted into 

 valuable pasture, and drainage has been elevated almost to an art, 

 these three species still survive in numbers. On the other hand, 

 mile upon mile of unreclaimed saltings fringe the Essex coasts, but 

 here the avocet is a rare visitor, to be pursued remorselessly by every 

 loafer who can borrow a gun. Nor need we believe that the average 

 Dutchman has any sentimental scruples as to taking eggs. Probably 

 nowhere are the meadows more cleanly swept of eggs in the early 

 spring. Every egg that has any market value is picked up for sale, 

 but the Dutchman does not kill the bird that lays the golden egg, and 

 after a time the legal limit to the egging season is reached, the grass 

 gets longer in the polders, and the birds have a chance of rearing 

 a brood in peace. 



But in Norfolk, when the "clinkers" bred by hundreds in the 

 marshes of Salthouse, the marshmen were not content with making 

 puddings and pancakes of their eggs, which alone would not have 

 been enough to exterminate them, but the punt gunners would fire 

 into the thick of them to save trouble in unloading their guns, and 

 thus wantonly kill ten or a dozen at a shot. 1 Their feathers, too, were 

 useful in making artificial flies, and in the breeding season the birds 



1 Stevenson and Southwell, Birds of Norfolk, ii. p. 237. 



