4 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS 



How long a period elapsed after that date before the last Spoonbill's nest was 

 built in Kngland, is unknown ; but as no penalty attached to shooting the bird, 

 we may conjecture that the fowler and the poacher, attracted by its " handsomeness," 

 rarely missed any chance that presented itself of killing the Spoonbill, especially 

 at the nuptial season, for its " copped crown " and its quaint " spatule-like bill." 

 We suspect, too, that the "purloyning" of the eggs of the Spoonbill was not 

 very seriously checked by the " peine " of a year's imprisonment, and the 

 " forfeiture of eightpence " an egg. The draining of the fens and marsh-lands, 

 in the parts of England frequented by the Spoonbill, had also much to 

 do with their elimination from the numbers of our resident fauna, and the 

 banishment of their whistling wings from the " tops of high trees " in many 

 parks where they were, and still would be, welcome visitors in the breeding 

 season. The Spoonbill visits the south-east of England nearly every year in 

 small companies of two or three pairs, which might still breed in this country as 

 they did two hundred years ago, were it not for their fatal conspicuousness, especially 

 if perched on a tree, which seals their doom within a few hours of their arrival. 

 But the moment they are caught sight of, the " lucky " observer hurries off to 

 borrow a gun if he does not own one, and often with several armed companions, 

 pursues these " strange " birds from resting place to resting place, till they have 

 been triumphantly done to death, or hunted from the land. 



The Spoonbill is distributed over all those parts of Europe, North Africa and 

 Asia, which constitute the Palaearctic Region of Zoologists. Species of the genus 

 are found also in India, South Africa, Australia, and New Guinea, and a single 

 roseate, instead of white representative, occurs in tropical America. 



The European Spoonbill, of both sexes, has, in the nuptial season, a crest of 

 drooping plumes, longer in the male than in the female, which, with the rest of 

 its plumage, is everywhere pure white, except for a buff sheen on the front of the 

 neck, and on the crown of the head, and a buff band on the breast. Its feet, 

 legs, and beak are black, but of the latter the spatulate end is bright yellow. Of 

 the same colour is a naked patch on the throat. 



In winter their plumage varies only in the sparser and shorter crest, and the 

 loss of much of their buff markings. 



The Spoonbill builds in both high and low situations. It very often selects 

 a heronry in which various species of Ardea are breeding, in or by a lake or 

 marsh, and there builds in the top, or on a lower branch of a high tree, not 

 occupied by a Heron's nest. If there be no high trees it may choose a low alder 

 or pollard willow similarly situated, and there it will construct, three to four 

 feet above the ground, a nest of branches two to three feet in width. Mr. O. 



