MORE WADERS 75 



The nest is formed of dry swamp grass, being 

 about the size of a Tit-lark's, but deeper ; it contains 

 four eggs, dull buff in ground-colour, marked with 

 various-sized blotches of dark reddish-brown. 



I have had the good fortune to watch those grace- 

 ful birds the Black-and-white Avocets in a living 

 state ; very few illustrations give the idea of their 

 dainty lightness. As to the bill, it looks as if two 

 very slight pieces of whalebone had been curved 

 upwards ; but the bird uses it in the most adroit 

 manner, never probing, but sweeping from side to 

 side with it, collecting food out of the liquid slub 

 and shifting sands. When on flight, they are most 

 conspicuous birds. 



The Avocet once nested in my own native 

 marshes of North Kent, where the Thames and the 

 Medway meet the tide, on those treacherous flats 

 which are cut into by channels, cuts, dykes, shifting 

 sands, and " gripes," a moist state of everlasting ooze 

 and grey blight. The locality is not much altered 

 in some places even now, for the simple reason that 

 nothing can be done to alter it. And just over the 

 water, as they call the Essex flats and shores, are 

 the legendary sanctuaries for the fowl. Our own 

 side was dotted with them, but these were only 

 supposed to be a few discontented stragglers that 

 had flighted from over there : full of mystery and 

 full of fowl were those Essex flats. The fowlers on 

 the Kentish flats would never even have dreamed 

 of going just over the water, or the Essex fowlers of 

 coming over to the Kentish shores. They were 



