BIRD-WATCHING IN A BREYDON PUNT 57 



lockers contain creature comforts. I the steady breeze, keep to the " chan- 

 will sit amidships and scull ; you be nel," marked plainly enough by a four- 

 seated on the stern and keep those mile row of red painted " stakes " on 

 binoculars handy. the left, and a row of black ones on 

 The wind is fair from the south-east, the right. Far away on the sky-line 

 a quarter beloved by every local wild- windmills, and here and there a marsh- 

 fowler and ornithologist when the mi- man's cottage, show above and break 

 grants are moving in spring or autumn, the monotony of the " walls," while a 

 You heard the shrill pipings and the half-dozen Breydoner's houseboats give 

 mellow whistling above-head last night, spots of colouring below them. Above 

 which told you birds were on their all is the blue, speckled here and there 

 travels, and had halted awhile to circle with a few swift-moving clouds of 

 around and puzzle out the meaning of Naples yellow. 



so many strange lights beneath them. We pull up at the " Lumps " just 

 The curlew " whauped," the grey inside the five-stake drain, putting to 

 plover " kle-a-ed," and the dunlin flight half a dozen town pigeons that 

 blew his keylike note in shrilly mono- have been gleaning among the drifted 

 syllables. We hope to see some of Zostera blades that the tide has flung 

 them breakfasting on the flats. up among the wiry rond-grass and 

 * * * stunted glass-wort. Their quest was 

 We are overtaken as we near the Hydrobia ulvce, a split -pea-sized mollusc 

 great railway bridge which now spans very like a Limncea stagnalis in shape, 

 the entrance to Breydon by a pictur- The pigeons fill their crops with them : 

 esque Norfolk wherry, whose deeply- we later on find every floating chip 

 laden hull, built on the selfsame lines as and every blade of Zostera marina 

 its early predecessors, the Vikings' ships, dotted thickly with the species. A 

 and huge sail, always befits a Broad- half-score loquacious whimbrel take to 

 land picture ; a careless fellow, hands wing in an opposite direction : they 

 in pockets, leans against the winch have been pushing their scimitar- 

 on the forepeak, whistling a popular shaped bills into the holes of the mud- 

 air, ^ls mate smoking a fragment of worms (Nereis) and picking up here 

 clay pipe at the tiller cleverly manipu- and there a shrimp and gammarus. 

 lates sail and rudder. Other wherries How conspicuously the white of their 

 ahead . dot Breydon, and bending to hinder quarters shows up against 



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