AUGUST IN A BREYDON PUNT 177 



coast, answering the piping call of topmost edges ; and which in a few 



their relatives who are hunting, sweep minutes will deepen into furnace-red, 



round in lessening circles, drop upon as the sun slips slowly below the pur- 



the higher part of the flat, tuck their pling horizon. Give me a Breydon 



bills into their wing-coverts, and forth- sunset before all others ! 



with fall into a sound slumber. There Two well-known Breydoners Fred 



is no preparatory dozing : they drop Clarke, the punt gunner, and Jary, the 



into sleep at once ; and the loud clap- Breydon Society's bird watcher are 



ping of our hands merely causes them making a haul with their smelt-net 



to wonderingly raise their heads, and hard by the latter's house-boat. The 



change a leg ; and then they settle bight of the net is just being drawn in 



once again to sleep. They have not as we lower the sail and run the punt's 



yet learnt to " 'ware gunner." nose on the mud-flat beside it. What 



There pass us two or three eel- a kicking and confloption of fins and 



fishers, who are going Waveney- wards, tails ! what gasping and contortioning 



to " bab ' ' the long night through, patient of suffocating fishes ! Here and there 



as the herons that will bear them com- a smelt squirms feebly in the meshes, 



pany. The piping notes of the com- and savage shore-crabs tear and strug- 



mon sandpiper, weak but shrill, are gle in vain endeavour to free them- 



constantly heard as this wall-loving selves ; shrimps (Crangon vulgaris}, 



species flits from one spot to another, ditch prawns (Palcemon varians) and 



disturbed by a pedestrian, or impelled little gobies tumble back out of the 



by its restless nature. It is greatly net into the water again ; and scores 



nocturnal in its habits, and pipes when of juvenile herrings push through again 



most of the waders have ceased to call, and escape. Catches vary greatly. 



A heron passing overhead shrieks a This haul accounts for thirty smelts, a 



note of recognition to his fellows, and few atherines, a vagrant grey mullet, a 



directly lowers himself into the fiery score small flounders, a few viviparous 



ripple painted in glowing red by the blennies, an eel of some size, and a 



setting sun. A small parcel of lap- couple of lesser weevers. Cautiously 



wings winnow their way across the Jary tips out the weevers on to the 



western sky, looking black against the flat and grinds them in with his heavy 



wave-like fringes of yellowish clouds, heel. He will tell you they " sting," 



now so fantastically gilded on their and that their venom does not lessen 



14 



