136 BIRDS OP NORFOLK. 



being a resident species in Norfolk, and of its breeding in 

 some numbers in the neighbourhood of Yarmouth. Hunt 

 in his "British Ornithology" (1815) referring to Mon- 

 tagu's statement that all his enquiries had failed to estab- 

 lish the fact of the shoveler still nesting in Lincolnshire, 



" It seems to me that popeler is only a corruption (by common 

 metathesis) of "lopeler" i.e., Lepelar Dutch, Lepler German, 

 which are both equivalent to Loffler from Loffel, a spoon or 

 shovel. I find among German names for Anas clypeata, Loffelente 

 (i.e., spoon-duck), and Leppelschnute (i.e., shovel-snout), while, 

 according to Bechstein, " Anas glaucion" is also called Spatelente, 

 Loffelente, and Leppelscheute (the last looking like a misprint for 

 Lepelschnute). "Lepeleend," i.e., shovel-duck, is the Dutch name, 

 or one of them, for Anas clypeata." The same authority, however, 

 points out that, on the other hand, the words shoveler and spoonbill 

 have been so completely " mixed up" by early authors that it is next 

 to impossible to determine whether the species referred to by 

 any writer is the duck or the wader Anas Clypeata or Platalea 

 leucorodia. In the above edition of the " Prompt, parv." I find 

 the following entries : " POPELEEE byrd (or schovelerd infra), 

 Populus" ; and in a foot note Mr. Way remarks, " It appears 

 subsequently that the POPELERE was considered by the com- 

 piler of the Promptorium to be the same as the shoveler duck, 

 Anas clypeata, Linn." The only other passage, however, in the 

 work, so far as I can ascertain, in which the word popeler occurs 

 and to which, I presume, Mr. Way alludes by the expression "sub- 

 sequently," appears under the head of schovelerd, thus, " schovelerd, 

 or popler, byrd (schoveler, or poplerd, s. schoues bee, or popler 

 byrd, p.) Populus." And if on this is founded Mr. Way's belief that the 

 compiler [a Dominican Friar, of Lynn Episcopi, Norfolk, A.D. 1440, 

 who might be presumed, therefore, to know something of the 

 provincial names of birds on the Lynn and Hunstanton coast] 

 associated the term popeler with Anas clypeata, I imagine most 

 ornithologists would decide in favour of the spoonbill (Platalea), 

 supported, as such impression would be by the association of 

 popelers with herons in the L'Estrange Accounts ; whilst Sir Thomas 

 Browne (circa, 1666) plainly distinguishes " the Platea or shovelarde, 

 which build upon the tops of high trees," from " Anas platyrhinchos, 

 a remarkably broad billed duck," the only allusion to this species in 

 his list of Norfolk birds. To whichever species then we may assign 



