CHAPTER VII 

 RUFFS AND REEVES 



Scarce British birds — Their visits — Reasons for their notoriety — Breed- 

 ing plumage of the male — A strange transformation — "Hilling" — 

 Battles royal — Breeding-places — Migrations — Old English haunts — 

 Ruff catching — The fatteners — A costly delicacy — Mr. Town's 

 journey — A forgotten table-bird — The fenman's lures — Food of these 

 birds. 



RUFFS and reeves, in the old days, before the vast 

 fens of Lincolnshire were reclaimed from water, 

 sedge, and mud, were quite familiar birds in England. 

 Now they are seldom heard of. Their nesting haunts 

 have been wrested from them, and the wild fenland, 

 where the bittern once boomed in peace and the ruffs 

 fought in springtime madly for the hen birds — the 

 reeves — knows them as breeding birds no more. Yet 

 it is not true to say that ruffs and reeves are extinct in 

 this country. They visit us still every spring and 

 autumn in their migrations north and south ; but their 

 numbers are comparatively few, and they are seldom 

 recognised among sandpipers, redshanks, greenshanks, 

 and other wading birds to which they bear a strong 

 family resemblance. Here and there, in some quiet 

 piece of fen or marshland, still left to Norfolk, or else- 

 where, a pair or two of ruffs and reeves may still nest 

 and rear their young. But such instances are very rare, 

 and from the gradual decline of fenland all over 

 Britain are likely to become yet more infrequent. 

 Ruffs and reeves have attained notoriety and favour 



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